Linguistic Prescriptivism
- LAST REVIEWED: 11 January 2024
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2024
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0208
- LAST REVIEWED: 11 January 2024
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2024
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0208
Introduction
The term prescriptivism refers to the ideology and practices in which the correct and incorrect uses of a language or specific linguistic items are laid down by explicit rules that are externally imposed on the users of that language. This ideology and its practices are now usually ascribed to nonlinguists or nonacademic linguists, whereas modern academic linguists, following Saussurean tenets, restrict themselves to the study and description of the structure of language and its natural use. Next to the term prescriptivism, the terms prescriptivist, prescriptive, and prescription occur in the literature on the subject. It is useful to briefly mention how these terms are used, and how they relate to each other. The term prescriptivist is used both as a noun and as an adjective. The noun is used to refer to those individuals practicing prescriptivism, whereas the adjective refers more generally to the adherence (of a person or work) to prescriptive concepts or ideals, often as an opposite to descriptivist, though this stark dichotomy is now seen by linguists as somewhat reductive. The adjective prescriptive is also used with this meaning, though more often in the phrase prescriptive grammar—works that are contrasted with academic, descriptive grammars. The noun prescription usually refers to a single instance of prescriptivism, or to put it more simply, a prescriptive rule. Technically, a prescription only tells one what should be done, whereas a proscription tells one what should not be done, but the two are often subsumed under the former term, almost exclusively so by nonlinguists. The present article focuses mainly on English prescriptivism, that is, studies on prescriptivism as practiced in the English-speaking world and pertaining to the English language.
General Overviews
The study of (English) prescriptivism is mainly a 21st-century phenomenon and has predominantly been conducted by scholars from the fields of philology, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Although language had been prescribed for centuries, it seems that the modern, linguistic concept of prescriptivism could only emerge when descriptive linguistics had become established as a scientific discipline, notably in the wake of the lectures of Ferdinand de Saussure in the early years of the 20th century. And since the investigation of linguistic prescriptivism by linguists is a kind of meta-study, the study of prescriptivism could possibly only arise when linguistics had become sufficiently self-aware. Comments on prescriptive grammar seem to have started with Bryan 1923 and Jespersen 2006. The strict separation between prescriptivism and descriptivism as applied to works of grammar and usage has in recent years been questioned and is increasingly seen as artificial, reductive, and a hindrance to a complete and nuanced understanding of usage. This is addressed in general terms in Huddleston and Pullum 2002 (cited under Reference Works), Beal 2004, Klein 2005, and Crystal 2010 (cited under Reference Works); with respect to 18th-century English grammars in Hodson 2006, Straaijer 2009, and Wilton 2014; and with respect to dictionaries in Mugglestone 2016. Another useful commentary on prescriptive grammar is Pullum 2004.
Beal, Joan C. 2004. English in modern times, 1700–1945. London: Arnold.
In the chapter “Grammars and Grammarians,” Beal provides an overview of 18th- and 19th-century prescriptivism from a sociohistorical perspective. Beal popularized the idea under historical linguists, that the purely prescriptive and descriptive points of view are better to be seen as the end points of a continuum rather than a dichotomy.
Bryan, William Frank. 1923. Notes on the founders of prescriptive English grammar. In Manly anniversary studies in language and literature. Edited by John Manly, 383–393. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press.
Bryan seems to be one of the first to use the term “prescriptive grammar” in his notes on the works of Robert Lowth, Joseph Priestley, George Campbell, and Noah Webster in the 18th century.
Curzan, Anne. 2014. Fixing English: Prescriptivism and language history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Proposes a new subdivision in which she distinguishes “four major strands of prescriptive rules that language authorities have historically imposed on the language and its speakers” (p. 5). Provides a more nuanced view of the various types of prescriptivism that exist and the motivations people have for employing these.
Hodson, Jane. 2006. The problem of Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) descriptivism. Historiographia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of Linguistics 33.1: 57–84.
Based on an analysis of the work of the grammarian Joseph Priestley, Hodson also seeks to collapse the descriptive-prescriptive dichotomy, stating that studies of 18th-century thinking about language have often overlooked the diversity therein. She argues that the 18th-century English grammarians had multiple rationalizations for their approach.
Jespersen, Otto. 2006. Essentials of English grammar. London: Routledge.
It was probably Jespersen who first contrasted prescriptive grammar with descriptive grammar (p. 4). Jespersen’s work has been very influential on the study of English in general, and English syntax in particular. Originally published 1933.
Klein, Wolf Peter. 2005. Deskriptive statt Präskriptiver Sprachwissenschaft!? Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32.3: 376–405.
DOI: 10.1515/zfgl.2004.32.3.376
Klein makes an observation similar to that by Beal, but bases it on the history of the study of the German language rather than English. Perhaps his most important argument, however, is that there is no purely descriptive practice, but that there is always a prescriptive component present, even if only one created post-factum by its reception.
Mugglestone, Lynda. 2016. Description and prescription in dictionaries. In The Oxford handbook of lexicography. Edited by Philip Durkin, 546–560. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199691630.013.39
Examines how descriptive and prescriptive aspects can coexist in a single work with regard to lexicography, investigating in particular the Oxford English Dictionary. Useful addition to the studies on prescriptivism in grammars and usage handbooks.
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2004. Ideology, power and linguistic theory. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, 30 December 2004.
Identifies the underlying principles under which prescriptivism operates, or more correctly, under which much prescriptivism professes to operate, and points out problems with each of these principles. A very enlightening perspective on prescriptive versus descriptive grammar.
Straaijer, Robin. 2009. Deontic and epistemic modals as indicators of prescriptive and descriptive language in the grammars by Joseph Priestley and Robert Lowth. In Current issues in Late Modern English. Edited by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Wim van der Wurff, 57–88. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
Extends the idea of a descriptive-prescriptive continuum into its two-constituent dimensions, arguing the new position that both exist simultaneously and even almost independently of each other in a single work, and that instances of prescriptivism and descriptivism do not cancel each other out, as it were.
Wilton, David. 2014. Rethinking the prescriptivist-descriptivist dyad: Motives and methods in two eighteenth-century grammars. English Today 30.3: 38–47.
DOI: 10.1017/S026607841400025X
Wilton builds on the two-dimensional representation of English grammars proposed in Straaijer 2009 by separating their intent from method. His innovation is the argument that prescriptivism is related to intent and descriptivism to method, and that consequently they belong to two different domains entirely. Wilton therefore proposes a new two-dimensional representation that does not use the terms prescriptive and prescriptive.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Accessibility Theory in Linguistics
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adjectives
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Ambiguity, Lexical
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Attention and Salience
- Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Dyslexia in A...
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Comprehension, Sentence
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Constructions, Verb-Particle
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dene (Athabaskan) Languages
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Cognitive
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Isolates, Language
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Khoisan Languages
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Language, Synesthesia and
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Lexicon
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Positive Discourse Analysis
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Cross-Cultural
- Pragmatics, Developmental
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Institutional
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Pragmatics, Teaching
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Representation and Processing of Multi-Word Expressions in...
- Salish Languages
- Sapir, Edward
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Slang
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sociopragmatics
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech, Deceptive
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translanguaging
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Recognition, Spoken
- Word Recognition, Visual
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages