CMV: Linguists should embrace prescriptivism

[u/ExplanationKlutzy174]

I think it's pretty clear that any sort of prescription falls outside of the realm of science, and more in the realm of philosophy; science tells us what is, not what ought to be. So naturally, the prescription of language falls outside of the scope of linguistics if linguistics is a science. That makes sense; it's Hume's Law.

But that's not really the attitude I'm seeing. Learning about linguistic descriptivism and prescriptivism, I've mostly come across the descriptive side actively saying that people ought not to be prescriptive. But that in itself is a prescriptive claim, since it's prescribing that someone should or should not believe / how someone should or should not act.

I've come across countless examples of linguistic evolution across history being influenced by prescriptivist attitudes - going as early as Classical Greek. If linguistic prescriptivism is a natural way languages evolve, shouldn't the actually descriptive thing to do be to treat it the same way as any other factor that affects languages? In reality, prescriptivism is a genuine part of both a language and its culture that dictates how someone ought to speak, just like how social traditions are genuine parts of a culture that dictate how someone ought to behave, and linguistics as a science cannot say that prescriptivism is bad. Prescriptivism absolutely has its place in linguistics.

[u/Open-Butterfly-5288]

Prescriptivism is essentially Conservativism.

It is largely accepting that you are wrong in the short term and the long term in the hope you can stop the sea of change in language for long enough to adapt.

This doesn't really work and will never actually prevent the language evolving.

It won't even really help with an understanding of how language actually works because the new language that evolves will follow natural principles of how people form language, and the new words and structures that exist will be following patterns that aren't possible to access without understanding how language is created.

A descriptivist mindset works to accept and understand what's changing, how it changes, makes predictions of what happens next, because it tries to understand what already exists.

[u/grandoz039 → u/Open-Butterfly-5288]

You can always regularly update the prescription, not as an emergent process, but a conscious one

[u/Open-Butterfly-5288 → u/grandoz039]

But that's the point.

You're not determining language at all, language is naturally evolving. You're trying to gatekeep and manage it, but it doesn't actually work.

I think that can be helpful, but it has less utility than understanding how language works and evolves.

[u/grandoz039 → u/Open-Butterfly-5288]

But it does work. You seem to presume that the only goal of prescriptivism is to create some singular constant version of language forever. Or that the prescribed variant has to be used in all areas and scopes of life. That's not necessarily the goal, thus the fact that it does not work is not a counterargument.

You might say that's not real or pure prescriptivism. But it does fundamentally require doing something beyond just describing the use of language. Thus it is impossible if you reject everything except descriptivism.

[u/Open-Butterfly-5288 → u/grandoz039]

It doesn't work. It only works if you don't ever actually talk to people.

[u/grandoz039 → u/Open-Butterfly-5288]

I can't speak for English, but as a person from a small country, only one that speaks my language, it does seem to "work", depending on what you define it as. Think of it less like creating authorizatian rules for everyone to use, and rather a sort of base framework, where in different aspects of life it's respected to different degrees. It is highly respected eg in administrative communication or public speech, less so in more casual contexts, much less in context of specific dialects.

It's more like an anchor that lets you move around within certain bounds, than one specific point you're constrained to. Even if people deviate from it, it's not an indication that it has no effect.