this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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Does existence of a language authority influence opinions about descriptivism/prescriptivism? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts
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I was thinking of this because in my country there's an institute which determines correct language and therefore many people speak or write their native language incorrectly. Whereas in English there's no central authority which would write the rules.

So when I look at linguistics videos on Youtube and hear descriptivism being the popular opinion, I'm wondering whether it's because that's just how most linguists are or it's the influence of anglophone mindset where nothing is written in stone and they would rather investigate and describe whatever phenomena occurs in the language naturally.

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[–] fubo 2 points 1 year ago

Linguistics is a descriptive science. There's no such thing as "prescriptivist linguistics".

Rather, there are prescriptive grammarians. These are typically not linguists, but rather professional writers or literature scholars who have strong opinions about "correct grammar" in their language, and instruct other people about it.

We have prescriptive grammarians in English too, like Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves) or the famous Strunk & White. However, we typically don't give them government jobs doing their hobby; we just let them do it privately.