~ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

The point was made that prescriptive rules - those that tell native speakers of a language how they should change the way they use that language in order to conform to some, often artificial notion of correctness -have a very bad track record of success in terms of affecting how most people actually use their language. The examples of rules that Larry cited are, in most cases, things that prescriptivists have complained about for centuries, and they are still raised in current discussions bemoaning the destruction of the English language by its speakers. The fact that the very same "mistakes" continue to be heard after centuries of efforts to correct them is, to my mind, good evidence of the ineffectiveness of the prescriptivist approach.

So, it's not a question of whether the prescribed rules are good or bad - how would that be judged anyway? - the issue in this discussion was whether prescribing rules has any effect on how people use English.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Tom Zurinskas
Sent: Sat 2/21/2009 10:36 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
 
These are bad ones!  And there aren't any good ones?  Not a single good rule out there?   I think we could think of a few.


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com


----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:49:45 -0500
> From: laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: ~ (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12:27 AM +0000 2/22/09, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>It would be nice if these linguistic classes have some subject
>>differenciation (generally). After the Monty Python guy directed the
>>person to the right door he said "stupid git", whatever that means.
>>
>>Writing a dictionary is descriptive, but then for anyone reading
>>them prescriptive. Below you say.
>>
>>> Except that your advice is highly prescriptive, while linguistics (not
>>> to mention history) has pretty much demonstrated that that approach
>>> doesn't work.
>>
>>This kind of statement is worthless without examples. Got any?
>
> Dennis Baron's book _Language and Good Taste_ is a good place to
> look. Prescriptivists have been fulminating over issues for
> centuries, often the same issues, without success. Don't say "I
> will", say "I shall" for the simple future. Don't say "you were",
> say "you was" (at least for the singular). Don't say "ice cream",
> it's illogical; should be "iced cream". Don't use "object" as a
> verb, that's a barbarism. (Similarly for most denominal verbs now
> extant.) Don't say "Who did you see?", should be "whom". Don't end
> sentences with prepositions or begin them with "and" or "but". Don't
> use words in anything other than original meaning--"tuition" doesn't
> refer to money, but to teaching. "Nice" means 'discriminating' (or is
> it 'stupid'?), not 'pleasant'. "Aggravate" doesn't mean 'annoy',
> only 'weigh down'. Do I really need to go on? I'm sure the
> phoneticians could provide similar examples of how not to pronounce
> words, and why we should pronounce them in the right way (which
> nobody now does). I believe it shouldn't be that hard to find
> additional examples--in the thousands.
>
> LH
>
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