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How do people here land on the subject of "prescriptive linguistics"? I personally find myself getting irritated at people putting down prescriptive linguistics. For the past 10 years, anyone who tells someone they're not using certain words correctly gets shut down as a prescriptive linguist. I'm reminded of an SSC post
I feel like the same applies for "prescriptive linguistics", it's basically a cudgel, a way of telling someone to die in a fire.
Charitably, people justify this argument by saying that linguistics is a descriptive science, so there's no place to be prescriptive. In their mind, linguistics is meant to just describe how people use language, not tell people how to use it.
Uncharitably, I think this sounds like a general push towards post modernism, a pushback on the notion that there's any correct way to do anything. They're not just against prescriptive linguists, they're against prescriptive anything.
In an anti-prescriptivist mindset, someone may use prescriptive linguistics as a cudgel to shut down alternate ways of expression, and (of course) enforce colonial and white supremecist standards on unprivileged minorities. This especially comes up in conversations about double negatives, which are commonly used in various low-class English variants, like ebonics.
I might push back on anti-prescriptivists by saying, many people who try to enforce grammar rules not a linguistic scientists, but people who are trying to enforce sense in their worlds. Therefore, they're not prescriptive linguists; they're not even linguists! They're people living in the world and using language as a tool, and they want that tool to be as effective as possible.
It's not their sacred duty to simply understand language no matter what, so don't call them a prescriptive linguist. When I tell someone not to use the word "literally" as emphasis, it's because I'm finding that the word literally is less useful than it used to be, and I want to combat that. Nowadays there is no word that accurately works in as an antonym for "figuratively"; the meaning is muddled and unclear because people have watered down the definition of literally to be something else.
I also sense there may be political aspects to the use of the word "prescriptive linguistics". relating to Noam Chomsky's history in the field and his political affiliations, but I don't know enough about that to comment. I'm interested if anyone here has info on this.
Not to sound like a silly fence sitter but to me this is obviously one of those "it takes both types" things.
Obviously language evolves or we'd all be speaking Proto-Indo-European or whatever came before that.
Obviously people need to be taught the right and wrong way to use the present language or it would be impossible to communicate.
Some people are inclined to push the boundaries of meaning and those people will never give a fuck when you tell them they used a word wrong.
Other people are inclined to feel indignant about every improper usage and those people will be teachers creating smart, sharp, well-spoken citizens.
The language will drift regardless.
idk it all seems necessary
I would probably agree with you, though certain things that muddy the meaning of language make my blood boil (like "literally").
To me, you don't sound like a fence sitter, because IME, non prescriptivists are ironically very prescriptive about others being non-prescriptive.
Take a look at this reddit thread for an example. Anyone defending the concept of a correctness of language seems to have to use a lot of apologetics up front, and the replies to these people tend to be "no, youre wrong".
Ha, yeah that and "exponentially" for me.
But I recently discovered that "infinitely" has been used in older writings to mean something like "it never seems to end" or "I can't count it" so I stopped being mad at people who use that in a non-mathematical sense.
Also “decimated” in the meaning of “largely destroyed” rather than “reduced in size somewhat” (by 10%, literally).
I can never remember whether decimated was originally supposed to mean "reduced to 10%" or "reduced by 10%". If the latter, then the common usage of decimated is pretty off, of course. But if the former, then it's not too different in meaning. Perhaps that's where the colloquial usage crept in to begin with.
I think the confusion comes from decimation being really really really bad as a punishment. It's intentionally losing 10% of your men, and it's a vicious psychological punishment on the rest. As a result it has this connotation of absolute disaster and came into common usage that way. Much moreso than "losing 10%." It doesn't really make much sense to use it to refer to 10% attrition generally, but rather to a situation in which 10% are lost and the rest are horribly traumatized by guilt.
Killing the 10th man actually erased the guilt of having mutinied/retreated, without having to mess around assigning individual responsibility. Pretty clever system for a society that's trying to field large armies without a professional military, which is why it was only a thing during the Republic expansion
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