descriptivists vs. prescriptivists

Shows opinions of a prescriptivist (a person who creates or encourages following language rules that try to control how people write and talk). This is contrasted with a scientific approach that attempts to describe a language how it is. Also notes how words enter dictionaries (i.e. if a particular word is used often enough by certain sociolinguistic groups - like those who write for Newsweek - then it can be entered in the dictionary).
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The language that fuels the great publishing empires. From the city that never sleeps, 24/7, on TV, cable, radio, electronic media, comes the words and ideas that define American culture and market it to the world. You can make a case that New York City is now the global capital of the English language. But what a language! Restless, slangy, constanting changing, and ever more informal. Many people believe that change is not only inevitable but unstoppable. But not John Simon, the acerbic theater critic of New York Magazine. A Yugoslav immigrant himself, he speaks for many mainstream Americans who fear that if American English continues to flout the rules of syntax and grammar, it'll sow the seeds of its own destruction.

Simon: Well, it has gotten worse. It's been my experience that there is no bottom, one can always sink lower, and that the language can always disintegrate further.

RM: How would you describe the state of our language today?

Simon: Unhealthy, poor, sad, depressing, um, and probably fairly hopeless.

RM: Jess Sheildlower stands for everything John Simon hates. He is the American editor of the august Oxford English Dictionary. With his dark suit, tie, and rolled up umbrella, he certainly looks the part. But, you can't judge a book by its cover, for he's also the author of a scholarly history of the f-word. Jesse's often in the New York Public Library looking for new usages. American English has always been inventive but it is now globally so influential that the Oxford Dictionary needs a full-time office in New York City.

Sheidlower: Well, American English has always been, at least for the last hundred years, it's always taken great pleasure in its slang. You can find even Walt Whitman writing in praise of slang in the 19th century, about how wonderful it is and how poetic it is, and how, you know, this is the American spirit distilled into language.

RM: So when you come here what are you, what are you looking for?

Sheidlower: We'll try to find magazines that have words in them that we think are gonna be of interest, and these can be in really any field out there.

RM: What are you looking at at the moment here?

Sheidlower: Well, right now we're looking at some magazines devoted to tattooing and body piercing. There are terms for these different kinds of piercing and there are terms for different kinds of tattoos. Blue, a music magazine, has a lot of stuff about hip hop, which is a big influence on the language. Guide to Zines, Fanzines,

RM: Fanzines, fan magazines?

Sheidlower: Yes, well, they're just called Zines nowadays.

RM: So, if you find a new, a new word in one of these, one of these really lurid magazines, and you decide to put it in, does that mean that the dictionary has adopted the word and as it were recognised it?

Sheidlower: No, not all. For now it just means that we have an example in the data base, but then we have an example in Time Magazine, and then we have an example in New York Magazine, and now we have an example in so and so. And we start to think, well okay, this is term that started off as a very restricted sub cultural thing, but now it's very wide spread. And the fact that we did read something like this originally will tell us something that we wouldn't know if all we read was Newsweek.

RM: Language enthusiasts tend to be either prescriptivists or descriptivists. Descriptivists like Sheidlower and other dictionary makers are content to describe language as it changes. Prescriptivists like Simon believe you need prescribed rules to preserve language.

Simon: The descriptive linguists are a curse upon their race, who, of course, think that what the people say is the law. And by that, they mean the majority, they mean the uneducated. I think a society which the uneducated lead the educated by the nose is not a good society.

Descriptivists deny treating uneducated usage as the law since they label it non-standard. But, they may record things like the often violent, homophobic, misogynistic lyrics of gangster rap. The result gives new currency to words like "ho" and "bitch".

RM: What do you say to the people like John Simon who are really angry about what they see as a serious decline in linguistic standards in this country?

Sheidlower: Well, I think they're wrong, and I think they're misguided. Language change happens and there's nothing you can do about it.

Simon: I mean, maybe change is inevitable, maybe dying from cancer is also i

Category:

Education

Tags:

• american
• english
• linguistics
• language
• variation
• sociolinguistics
• prescriptivism
• descriptivism
• OED
• Sheidlower

[firebreathone]

Notice what the guy says at 4:01: "the descriptive linguists are a curse upon their race". It just goes to show how incredibly delicate this issue is.

[firebreathone]

current ideas of "correctness" and "proper writing and speech" mostly date back to the 18th century where prescriptivists(predominantly Bishop Robert Lowth)had a major influence on the way people thought about their language. He was also the one who formulated the idea that one should not end a sentence with a preposition (preposition stranding). Whilst this is a stylistic issue, it is by no means syntactically incorrect to do so. prescriptivists often forget that language-change is inevitable

[merry3perish]

I saw this in class and literally laughed out loud at John Simon.

[p1ck3r1ng]

I think we have to be more descriptivists than ever before because of the rate of growth like everything nowadays. Media and internet have the most freedom they have ever had and are moving and developing quicker than ever before. Gone are the days when we could put 100 rules in a book and distrubute it into schools and thats that. Formal grammar should still be part of education, but the correct use is up to the indivudual nowadays because of our freedom and less obvious social class boudaries.

[theNianda]

Thanks for posting this video! My assignment is well on the way!!

[Cougar139tweak]

Screw John Simon , Language is a living thing and the "English" he speaks would be looked down upon or even mis understood 200+ years ago. Variety is the spice of life, how boring would language and life be, Lets all be the same and speak the same way, I think I saw a show on it was tried before only it was harder to understand as I think it was old film and it was IN GERMAN.

[ryan84160]

Isn't this how most languages are "created" ? I mean English is just a Germanic language that deviated from other Germanic languages like Frisian and Saxon and was bastardized Norman. The romance languages evolved in the dark ages from Latin after the fall of the roman empire. Throughout history there has never been anyone writing the rules of how a society can or can't create its own new languages, they just happen.

[karatekid1001]

Watchin this for Extra Credit

[firebreathone]

exactly right. That's the main distinction.

[firebreathone]

This ability to change, adapt and always remain mutually intelligible across seemingly diverse linguistic groups. Now, that is a STRENGTH, not a weakness!

[firebreathone]

the guy doesn't see that change is something that is inevitable. Moreover, he fails to appreciate the fact that part of what makes English so great is this ability to change.