Descriptivism and Prescriptivism: A Small Powerful Speech

[@creativeoj]

When my sister was an English teacher, she would say to her students: "so long as the other person knows what you're saying, I don't care how you write texts. But you should know how to write formally for contexts where you need it." That gets at a similar idea to what you're saying here. No, there is no "correct" way to write, but people sometimes expect certain things from your writing, and it changes depending on your circumstance. It's good to meet those expectations if it promotes more effective communication.

[@mikesmithz]

Super interesting and thought-provoking video. I suppose it all leads back to the whole "if all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail" thing. Surely, it is better to have a big toolbox and apply the right tool to the right problem. I'm sure you could hammer in a screw, but it's much more elegant to use a screwdriver. Oh, and yes, writing messages to you is almost impossible as I have visions of you getting disturbingly angry at misplaced commas and weak adverbs.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Ha! Rest assured, I expect the internet to be a place for informal writing 😉 (I very nearly used the hammer+nail line in this one, so I'm glad you filled it in!)

[@mikesmithz]

@WritingwithAndrew whenever you need a cliche, I'm your guy! Well, even my formal writing is informal, so that's nice to know. I have visions of you printing off my posts and then showing them in your classroom, and then having the whole class point and laugh at my scribbles.

[@joegoddard8992]

Great point about "descriptive" prescriptivism. Thank you for the video!

[@delstanley1349]

Bravo, one of my favorite videos. I've never heard either of the terms before, but I'm quite familiar with the concept anyway, of prescriptivism---I usually hear it as "the king's/queen's english. I suppose in Descriptivism you "tell it like it is," and in Prescriptivism you "tale it like it is." Okay, I'll high-tail it out of here!

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks! High-tailing it may be wise--but come back soon 😆

[@delstanley1349]

@@WritingwithAndrew >Thanx, but is that Andrew using a hyphen? I use them, BUT I don't know any better! I saw your video on the subject. I'm impressed, you're practicing what you preach----RIGHT AWAY too on Descriptivism and Prescriptivism. Man I love watching your videos! Your videos should be prescriptive for many would be writers. Thanx again.

[@smokingiscool599]

Somewhere out there is a translation of Caesar's Commentaries that was translated into "modern" English by a Scottish professor sometime in the 1600s (I think, it's very old if it isn't the 1600s). I can't find the translation right now, but the body of the work is insane. It's as difficult to understand as if a guy with a thick Scottish accent was just describing Caesar's escapades to you in a pub. In the preface to the book, some other Scottish professor was writing about how great this "modern" translation was compared to a direct and dry English translation. To prove his point he inserted a couple of paragraphs of dry translation. The dry translation was perfect modern English, it could have been cut from a translation that was published in the last decade. Anybody who could read English between now and at least the 1600s, but probably earlier, could have read that direct translation and understood it perfectly. Being dismissive about basing proper English on Latin is a serious shame. It totally loses sight of the hard-won progress of clear communication that has slowly evolved over centuries, and for no reason. It's just fun to feel superior to the stuffy generations that came before. There are reasons for the stuffy outdated stuff that people were doing, and it's sad that people's life work in trying to figure out rules of thumb to try and get students to consistently be able to write English that would be understood by as many English readers as possible in a time when pens and ink and postage were eye-wateringly expensive is just brushed aside as being worthless or misguided, instead of being celebrated as the intermediary steps between the insane English writing that drives most readers away from classic English literature, and the modern English that we write today.

[@blobusus]

That was superb. Thank you, sir.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

You bet--thanks!

[@DASBookbinding]

Ain’t that a bit of fun. I sometimes feel like a lab rat in Andrew’s experiments.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

🔬👀

[@kipper1668]

Austin: Nice vid!

[@Francisco28424]

Amazing video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.🙂 I would like to know if you think descriptivism has led to a broader acceptance of different accents, dialects, and the general usage of various words in different regions (of a country). I’m from Portugal (English is not my first language), and recently there has been an effort to "broaden the horizons," so to speak, when discussing our language. For example: -Your regional accent is not "wrong," and the accepted norm is not "right." -That word may not align with the "norm," but it is still correct Portuguese. And so on. Is it possible that this comes from a descriptive worldview?

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks! And, yeah, I think so--a natural consequence of that approach is recognizing that different just means different, not right or wrong. If people can communicate with each other and have no trouble doing it, who can really say that they're not doing it right?

[@Francisco28424]

@@WritingwithAndrew Perfectly put ☺

[@jcfreak73]

I really like your approach to this video. I too see prescriptivism as... sophomoric, but have often felt that descriptivism is too emphasized. That said, I would say that even in linguistics, descriptivism is wrong. While a procedural descriptivism may be appropriate to have proper objectivity in studying a language, no participant is ever a true descriptivist. In order for language to work, there have to be agreed upon rules. Sure, it doesn't matter whether a society drives on the left or right side of the road, but it sure matters if YOU do if you live there. In a language, the words have to be put together so that the listener will understand their relation, and the participants have to be on the same page about what those words mean. I know I'm preaching to the choir about some of this, but my point is that English, as a language, isn't descriptivist, and I don't think a language can be. Indeed, I've encountered many who take a "que sera sera" approach to their speech or verbiage, and cite descriptivism as a defense. Though I know this to be an abuse of the term, I can I justify the idea that a term can be abused in strict descriptivism anyway? It is much like an anthropologist, who, when studying other cultures or religions, cares more how and why people act as they do, with no judgement on whether they should. But that anthropologist would would be guilty of incompetence to presume that members of that culture take the same attitude, or even could. This is why I consider myself, linguisticly speaking, to be utilitarian. I think a language requires prescription to function, but it doesn't matter which prescriptions they are, as long as they don't undermine the language's ability to function and are sufficiently consistent that discrepancies between two speakers can be negotiable. At least that is my thinking. There may be some superior 4th option that don't know of.

[@jcfreak73]

BTW, I hope I didn't shock prescriptivists with that last line.

[@WriterScience]

So glad you addressed this point, descriptivists are so annoying. A writing teacher can’t give a single guideline but for some descriptivist to chime in with the dreaded “Linguist here” before forbidding one’s advice, which as you say is based on descriptive analyses of the language. Imagine if these people wrote textbooks: a descriptive approach to earth science would include a description of the fact that some people believe that the earth is flat, and we’re not here to judge! They’re just pollsters, part of a deeper ideological project to undermine notions of right and wrong, and people who care about language and writing in particular need to make a stand against their mealy mouthed equivocations and sanctimony.