Linguistic prescription
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language should be used. These rules can cover such topics as standards for spelling and grammar or syntax, or rules for what is deemed socially or politically correct or proper. It includes the mechanisms for establishing and maintaining an interregional language or a standardized spelling system. It can also include declarations of what particular groups consider to be good taste. If these tastes are conservative, prescription may be (or appear to be) resistant to language change. If they are radical, prescription may be productive of neologism. Prescription can also include recommendations for effective language usage.
Prescription is contrasted with description, which observes and records how language is used in practice, and which is the basis of all linguistic research. Serious scholarly descriptive work is usually based on text or corpus analysis, or on field studies, but the term "description" includes each individual's observations of their own language usage. Unlike prescription, descriptive linguistics eschews value judgments and makes no recommendations.
Prescription and description are often seen as opposites, in the sense that one declares how language should be while the other declares how language is. But they can also be complementary, and usually exist in dynamic tension. Many commentators on language show elements of both prescription and description in their thinking, and popular debate on language issues frequently revolves around the question of how to balance these.
See also
- Descriptive linguistics
- Fowler's Modern English Usage
- History of linguistic prescription in English
- Hypercorrection
- Language policy
- Linguistic purism
- List of English words with disputed usage
- List of frequently misused English words
- Logorrhoea
- Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
- Mondegreen
- Pedant
- Pleonasm
- Politics and the English Language
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Traditional grammar