Inner Prescriptivism

[Fred Shapiro]

Jesse Sheidlower just referred in a posting to his "inner prescriptivist."
I notice that it is not uncommon for linguists and lexicographers on this
list to criticize pet-peeve linguistic usages, contrary to the usual
descriptivist ideology of linguistic scholars.  I wonder whether there
have ever been any studies done of closet prescriptivism among linguists.
(I did see a study a few years ago revealing that members of the UCLA
English Department, in their own private reading for pleasure, actually
preferred the literature of dead white European males.)

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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