36.936, Reviews: New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research: Ankerstein (2025)

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Subject: 36.936, Reviews: New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research: Ankerstein (2025)

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Date: 17-Mar-2025
From: Carrie A. Ankerstein [c.ankerstein at mx.uni-saarland.de]
Subject: Applied Linguistics: Ankerstein (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-1425

Title: New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research
Series Title: Multilingual Matters
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Multilingual Matters
           http://www.multilingual-matters.com/
Book URL:
https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781800416147

Editor(s): Nuria Yáñez‐Bouza, María E. Rodríguez‐Gil, Javier
Pérez‐Guerra

Reviewer: Carrie A. Ankerstein

GENERAL SUMMARY
“New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research” is a volume of conference
proceedings from the 6th Prescriptivism Conference held in Vigo, Spain
in September 2021. It is meant as a multi-disciplinary showcase of
research in prescriptivism practices from the 18th century to the
present, looking at the role of prescriptivism in language usage
guides, literary and scripted texts, in non-mainstream English speech
communities, and in other languages. Contributions are from
established and early career researchers, Emeritus professors and
graduate students. The intended audience includes postgraduate
students, researchers and other professionals. The volume is available
as an ebook: GBP 30.00, EUR 40.00, USD 50.00 and hardback: GBP 119.95,
EUR 144.95, USD 159.95.
CHAPTER BY CHAPTER SUMMARY
Editor Nuria Yáñez-Bouza’s Chapter 1 “Prescriptivism in Language,
Literary Texts and Speech Communities” sets the scene for the current
volume, noting that the new approach to prescriptivism views
prescriptivism not as the mere opposite of descriptivism in a simple
binary distinction, but as an important part of sociolinguistic study.
Yáñez-Bouza argues for incorporating “prescriptivism into the dynamics
of the language”, arguing that it should “not be seen as a hindrance
to language change […] but rather as a significant aspect of language
history” worthy of academic study (p. 2). She cites Curzan’s (2014)
influential and nuanced categorization of prescriptive strands:
“standardizing”, which seeks to document correct forms, aiming for a
conformity of use; “stylistic” which identifies appropriate forms for
different registers; “restorative” which seeks to revive earlier
forms; and “politically responsive” prescriptivism which seeks to
address changes in society, for example the use of gender inclusive
language. Yáñez-Bouza notes that this approach has generated a new
body of research, noting the conference series on prescriptivism,
running since 2003, and subsequent reference volumes on
prescriptivism; the current volume being the latest edition.
Yáñez-Bouza argues that this volume aims to represent a variety of
angles from which prescriptivism can be studied, with the title “New
Horizons in Prescriptivism Research” meant to convey the dynamic
nature and current trends and future directions of the field. It is an
exploration of prescriptivism in language (Part 1), literary and
scripted texts (Part 2), and speech communities (Parts 3 and 4),
allowing the exploration of the role of prescriptivism “as a social
factor in language variation and change, in written and spoken
standards, as a sociocultural phenomenon enregistered in the voices of
literary texts and scripts […] and as a symbol of identity in the
construction of speech communities” (p. 9). The chapter concludes with
a brief overview of the following chapters and closes with the
argument that ignoring the role of prescriptivism in modern linguistic
study will result in a failure to fully understand how language is
used in the real world, thereby overlooking an important aspect of
language development.
Part 1: Prescriptivism in Language Norms
In Chapter 2 “’One of the commonest faults of even well-bred people’?
Attitudes towards post-vocalic /r/-absence, /h/-dropping and
/h/-insertion in 19th-Century English Grammars”, Marco Wiemann
investigates phonological variation and the attitudes towards some
pronunciation variants in the Collection of Nineteenth Century
Grammars (CNG) corpus of 258 grammars published in Britain and North
America. Wiemann found that general discussions of /r/ and /h/ were
neutral and descriptive, whereas post-vocalic /r/-absence,
/h/-dropping and /h/-insertion were discussed negatively in the CNG.
Wiemann also notes that the discussion of the pronunciation features
in the grammars is taken directly from pronunciation dictionaries and
that future research in the perpetuation of prescriptive norms is
worthy of exploration.
Carmen Ebner-Mosely’s Chapter 3 “’Your not my type’: Effects of
Stigmatised Linguistic Variation in Online Dating” explores the impact
of grammatical errors (grammos such as “could of” instead of “could
have” or “they’re” instead of “their”, etc.) and mechanical errors
(typos such as “abuot” instead of “about” or “ohter” instead of
“other”) in an English-speaking dating context, using an indirect
attitude elicitation in which participants were shown a stimulus
(which was either correct or contained a grammo or typo) and presented
with a forced choice: “Pass, next” or “I like. More please!”.
Participants were also asked to rank the stimuli on an 11-point scale,
rating the writer of the text for variables such as likeability,
conscientiousness, intelligence, etc. In addition to providing
demographic information, participants were asked to rate their
attitudes towards language use, such as whether they get annoyed by
incorrect use and whether they are judgmental. Ebner-Mosely confirmed
the results of similar studies: both grammos and typos have a negative
impact, but the effect was stronger for typos in comparison to
grammos. Ebner-Mosely argues that typos are likely to have a stronger
impact because they are more salient; grammos in contrast are less
salient because they rely on the reader’s language knowledge and
experience. Ebner-Mosely argues that the study of prescriptivism is
more nuanced than correct-incorrect judgements; context and
appropriateness are also important factors.
Anja Wanner & Difei (Lynn) Zhang explore modern views of prescriptive
rules in Chapter 4 “Bad Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness”. They
asked 180 American speakers from different age groups and professional
backgrounds to complete a grammaticality judgement questionnaire
composed of 14 sentences containing a syntactic feature that
prescriptive grammars and usage guides typically address. Wanner &
Zhang found that their participants were not sensitive to the
traditional prescriptive rules commonly cited in introductory
linguistics textbooks (i.e., split infinitives, sentence final
prepositions and the use of “hopefully”) and instead found that their
participants rated uses of subject and object case pronouns (i.e.,
“and me” in the subject position) more negatively. Wanner & Zhang
argue that when prescriptivism is discussed in the linguistics
classroom, instructors should use such examples instead of the old
standards. They also argue for helping students to become more
meta-linguistically aware so that they can better reflect on language
use and attitudes towards it.
Part 2: Prescriptivism in Literary and Scripted Texts
In Chapter 5 “Poetry’s for Kings: Prescriptivism and Resistance in
English Poetry”, Joan C. Beal investigates attitudes towards
non-standard language in poetry from the 16th century to today. Beal
notes that in the 16th century, English was just beginning to be used
in learned texts but was not yet taught in grammar schools, where
Latin still reigned. Poets of the time were advised to use “standard
language”, but the concept of “poetic license”, i.e., deviating from
the standard, was acknowledged. Beal notes that this was the start of
the push and pull between linguistic ideology and the role of poets
that was to play out over the centuries. Beal explored William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), John
Keats (1975-1821), John Clare (1793-1864), Tony Harrison
(1937-present) and the Beat poets. She found that, in the 16th
century, poetry was seen as “courtly” and the view was that the
language should match. In the 18th century, prescriptivism was
dominant and in the 19th century, there were objections to Keats’s use
of Cockney rhymes, but Clare’s use of dialectal vocabulary was
praised. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the poet was seen as a
performer whose voice should be authentic. Beal concludes that this
push and pull between prescriptivism and poetic voice is likely to
continue.
Jane Hodson, in Chapter 6 “The Significance of Stance in Fictional
Representations of Non-Standard Language and Prescriptivism”, argues
that stance and the use of metalanguage can aid the analysis of
fictional texts; that it can be informative about the attitudes toward
non-standard language, inviting readers to align themselves (or not)
with those attitudes. Hodson notes that, for the most part, fiction
follows prescriptive forms, but that there is also some resistance to
prescriptive usage. Hodson presents a close-reading of three novels:
“Miriam” (1800), “Domestic Scenes” (1820) and “The Unknown Ajax”
(1959), showing that there are two strands in British fiction: one is
a dominant prescriptive strand, the other is a dialect-endorsing one.
Hodson notes that some texts, such as “The Unknown Ajax”, are
ambiguous, allowing readers to take either stance.
In Chapter 7, “Breaking the Who/Whom Rule: The Final Taboo?”, Ingrid
Tieken-Boon van Ostade explores the use of “who/whom” in popular
culture, starting with its coverage in usage guides, including
Kingsley Amis’s cheeky “The King’s English”. Tieken-Boon van Ostade
used the keyword “whom” in searches in The TV Corpus (around 325
million words; 122 instances of “whom”) and The Movie Corpus (around
200 million words; 72 instances of “whom”), indicating similar degrees
of use in both corpora. These instances were categorized in terms of
variety of English (North American, Australian/New Zealand, British,
etc.) and by type of metalinguistic comment (correction, discussion,
explanation, criticism through context, awareness). Tieken-Boon van
Ostade also explored the use of “who/whom” in more detail using the
British series “Roadkill” and the American series “The Chair”, with
the accompanying issues of race, sexism and ageism. She found that
“who/whom” is used for characterization in popular culture in the US,
whereas in the UK, such criticism of the use of “who/whom” is
unappealing to audiences. She also notes the different attitude about
“who/whom” in Australia, where the old prescriptive rule is followed.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade ends her chapter with a call to create
databases for pop culture from different Anglophone backgrounds so
that the differences in attitude about linguistic phenomena can be
explored more effectively.
In Chapter 8 “Evaluating the Standardising Influence of the Copy
Editor: A Qualitative Study”, Linda Pillière turns attention to copy
editors, who are thought to be at the forefront of
hyper-standardization. Pillière explored what changes copy editors
propose and how these relate to the prescriptive practices in usage
guides and to what extent authors make the changes. Pillière studied
three British, Booker Prize winning authors: Penelope Lively, Jim
Crace and Kazuo Ishiguro, analyzing final copy-edited proofs, lists of
copy editors’ queries and author responses. Pillière found that copy
editors frequently evoked common prescriptive rules (i.e., split
infinitives and sentence final prepositions) though not consistently,
even for the same editor and text. She found that authors were
generally more likely to address grammatical comments in contrast to
comments on word choice and concludes with some thoughts on how such
changes affect the author’s voice.
Part 3: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities I: Varieties of English
Lucía Loureiro-Porto’s Chapter 9 “’He speak very careful English’: A
View on Prescriptivism in Two Outer-Circle Varieties of English”
explores prescriptive markers in two outer-circle varieties of
English, Indian English and Hong Kong English, using data from the
International Corpus of English, also comparing them to inner-circle
varieties. Three registers were investigated: private conversation,
academic writing and student writing for two markers of linguistic
democratization: modals (i.e., ‘have to’, ‘need to’, ‘want to’) and
epicene pronouns (i.e., singular ‘they’ and combined ‘he or she’) and
non-democratic options (i.e., ‘must’ and generic ‘he’). Loureiro-Porto
found that the two outer-circle varieties follow the same
democratization trends found in the inner-circle, though this was
stronger for Hong Kong English than for Indian English. She also found
that the outer-circle varieties generally adhered to prescriptive
norms, though there were differences between the two varieties, and
student and academic writers.
In Chapter 10 “Indian English Usage in the 21st Century: Enduring
Colonial Norms and Emerging Local Standards”, Kranti Doibale, Sachin
Labade and Claudia Lange present a pilot study investigating the
acceptability judgements for usages in the prescriptive tradition and
lexicogrammar features that are distinctive to Indian English (and
other South Asian varieties), such as the use of “only” and “itself”
as presentational focus markers and verb complement patterns such as
“discuss about” and “request for”, etc. Doibale et al. found mixed
results, but their respondents (affluent, highly educated speakers)
generally did not reject regionally distinctive lexicogrammar
features. They argue, quoting Schneider (2007: 49), that a “locally
rooted linguistic self-confidence” is emerging.
Magdalena Císlerová explores the decolonization process in a close
reading of metalinguistic comments found in two Australian novels,
Peter Carey’s “Illywhacker” (1985) and Hsu-Ming Teo’s “Behind the
Moon” (2005), in Chapter 11 “'Cahstle, (…) not Kehstle': Reflections
of Prescriptivism in Australian Literature”. Císlerová found that
prescriptive norms, a preference for Standard British forms over
Australian, are entrenched in Carey’s 1985 novel, but this is not so
for Teo’s 2005 novel. Císlerová concludes that “language and identity
in Australia are inextricably linked, and that cultural insecurities
sowed by colonialism are reflected in attitudes to AusE [Australian
English] over a century after Australia became independent” (p. 231).
Part 4: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities II: Beyond English
Speaking Communities
Heimir F. Viðarsson explores the uptake of prescribed morphosyntactic
and lexical features in 700 student essays (including teachers’
corrections) in Icelandic in Chapter 12 “Towards Modelling Past and
Present Effects of Prescriptivism: Icelandic 19th- and 21st-Century
Student Essays”. The motivation for this study is whether prescriptive
changes to a language can be successfully enacted by institutions, in
this case, schools. Viðarsson explored linguistic features that had
been counteracted as part of the prescriptive tradition, including the
use of the generic pronouns “maður” (one) and “þú” (you), the free
definite marker hinn/sá” (the), superfluous “að” (that), and
verb-adverb/adverb-verb placement. Viðarsson found a trend for
decreasing adherence to prescriptive norms over the 19th and 21st
centuries and found interaction effects of gender, region and age of
the speaker and the uptake of the linguistic feature.
In Chapter 13 “Prescriptivism and Variation: The Greek Word for
'Coronavirus'”, Spiros A. Moschonas, Costas Mourlas and Thodoris
Paraskevas explore the real-time use of the variants “κορονοϊός”,
“κορωνοϊός”, “κορονaϊός”, and “κορωνaϊός” and the usage guides
published by various news outlets over three phases spanning from May
2013 to June 2020. The four variants under investigation differ
according to orthography in the first constituent (<o>/<ω>) and
morphology (the linking vowel -a-/-o-), which also affects
pronunciation. Moschonas, et al. started with the research question of
whether usage followed prescriptivism or whether prescriptivism was
responding to usage, but found that the interaction between
prescriptivism and usage was more complex. Moschonas, et al. conducted
their corpus study with two types of data: a metalinguistic corpus (74
texts prescribing the correct variant) and a linguistic corpus
(authentic usage of the variants in news articles, tweets and radio).
In Phase 1 (May 2013 to May 2014), they found variation without overt
prescription, with the -a- variants and <ω> variants most dominant. In
Phase 2 (December 2019 – April 2020), when most of the metalinguistic
texts were being produced, Moschonas et al. found that the preferred
spelling was still <ω> but the variants with -o- were now dominant. In
Phase 3 (May 2020 – June 2020), after the establishment of
metalinguistic texts, “κορονοϊός” was the dominant variant. Moschonas,
et al. argue that “[a]lthough prescriptivism aims at eliminating
variation, it could also […] introduce or foster some variation,
albeit in a highly compartmentalized manner” (p. 290); with
compartmentalization found in different cases and domains.
In Chapter 14 “Suppressed No More: Prescriptivism and the Evaluation
of Optional Variability”, Machteld de Vos and Marten van der Meulen
explore the assumption that standardization is the suppression of
optional variation using normative works on Standard Dutch. Their aim
was to provide an overview of how optional variation is approached in
prescriptivism using normative works from 1550-1650 (n=10), marking
the onset of Standard Dutch and 1917-2016 (n=131), a period of
maintenance of Standard Dutch. Instead of using the three stances
towards variation used in other research (non-acceptance, acceptance
and a category in between), de Vos and van der Meulen propose six
categories: suppression, reallocation, conditional suppression,
awareness, acceptance and advocacy. Thus they argue that
standardization is not necessarily intolerant of variation and thereby
question the idea that prescriptive and descriptive approaches are
dichotomous.
EVALUATION
The volume is clearly aimed at a postgraduate, research/professional
audience and most readers will likely be in the field of prescriptive
research, but Wanner & Zhang’s Chapter 4 “Bad Grammar and
Metalinguistic Awareness” in particular has broader relevance and is
clearly useful for linguistics instructors in its challenge of
attitudes towards prescriptivism in the linguistic classroom. They, as
others in the volume (see for example de Vos and van der Meulen’s
Chapter 14), challenge the commonly evoked prescriptive-descriptive
dichotomy and accompanying dismissal of prescriptivism by many
linguists and instructors of linguistics. The point is well made and
supported by their data and this linguist and instructor, your current
reviewer, has changed and enriched her teaching materials accordingly.
That is the strength of this volume as a whole: it presents the range
(of foci and methodologies) and relevance of research into
prescriptivism showing that a serious acknowledgement of
prescriptivism is necessary to fully understand linguistics and the
study of language. This is why I asked to review this volume – I had
strong feelings towards prescriptivism but I knew that I lacked an
evidence-based foundation for my views. As Yáñez-Bouza says in Chapter
1, if the role of prescriptivism is neglected, we will fail to explore
how language is used in the real world and we will miss out on a vital
part of how languages develop.
All chapters are stand-alone (though there is an index pp. 319-326),
which is a strength considering that cover-to-cover readers are
unlikely, but for that reason cross-references to related in-volume
chapters would have been beneficial. These, with the exception of
cross-references in Chapter 11 to Chapters 5 and 6, are lacking. For
example, in Chapter 7 Tieken-Boon van Ostade mentions non-standard
language in popular culture, including fictional texts, for the use of
characterization, a reference to Hodson’s Chapter 6 (and vice-versa)
would have been a nice tie-in and would alert readers to another
potentially helpful paper. In another example, Pillière found that
copy editors frequently follow traditional prescriptive rules
surrounding split infinitives and sentence-final prepositions, which
is in contrast to Wanner & Zhang’s finding that modern (American)
audiences are less sensitive to these specific rules; here again
cross-references would have linked these different (conflicting?)
points of view.
It is clearly stated that “New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research”
came out of the 6th Prescriptivism Conference and the chapters read as
such, i.e., as proceedings from the conference, in that they generally
present pilot or preliminary studies limited in scope and data, see
for example Wanner & Zhang’s report of “preliminary insights” (Chapter
4, p. 78) and their acknowledgement of incomplete survey data (not all
participants provided background info, p. 79, complicating the
analysis); Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s acknowledgement of practical
limitations concerning corpus data (Chapter 7, p. 133); Pillière’s
small-scale study and “tentative” findings (Chapter 8, p. 154);
Doibale et al. present a “pilot study” (p. 186) in Chapter 10; and so
on. This is not necessarily a weakness, however, and some readers,
particularly current postgraduate students in the field, may find
these chapters to be fruitful starting points for their own research;,
indeed several chapters end with ideas for future study.
In summary, I can recommend this volume as a broad selection of
current research in the field that successfully challenges the view of
prescriptivism that many linguists might hold – assuming that they,
like I was before, are dismissive of prescriptivism, unaware of its
nuance, depth and relevance. The range covered here is also likely to
be useful to current postgraduate students and new active researchers
in the field as inspiration for their own research.
REFERENCES
Curzan, A. 2014. Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History.
Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, E.W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties around the
World. Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Carrie Ankerstein, PhD, is a senior lecturer in English Linguistics at
Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany, where she teaches general
linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and academic
writing. Her research interests include second language acquisition
and explicit and implicit processes in L1 and L2 language processing.



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