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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I've noticed a lot of "presciptivism for me, descriptivism for thee". That is, the distinction is employed strategically. When it's prescribing a language change you like or think is moral, then it's fine. When it's prescribing a status quo, or a change, you dislike, then don't you know language evolves and changes with the times? The culture war angle is obvious. Left wing prescriptivism is inevitable, natural, aligning with the direction of history. Right wing prescriptivism is wrongheaded, denying the nature of language itself, and just slowing the march of progress.

For me, sure, understand linguistics in your own head descriptively, but engage in your language community prescriptively, or else the other guy's preferences win by default. Descriptivism in practice is unilateral disarmament.

Grammar Nazis versus Grammar Commies, to coin a phrase.

I tend toward the prescriptivist end of things simply because if words don’t have fairly solid definitions, any sort of communication between groups is difficult or impossible. If we don’t mean the same thing when using the same word, if I mean “race supremacist” when I say “racist” and you mean “not specifically dismantling white privilege”, we aren’t communicating effectively here. And either we begin inserting potted definitions in our writing, or we accept that the other person is going to take you to mean the worst possible thing.

The issue is that when there is a correct language, it creates a target for any group to seize for its own ends. And if you trust the people best positioned to seize correct language--university academics, media personalities, and government bureaucrats--to be careful stewards of useful, pleasant English, I don't know what to tell you.

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