Prescriptivism v. Descriptivism

Author Bryan A. Garner, in his article “Making Peace in the Language Wars” (published in Garner’s Modern American Usage 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2009), seeks to negotiate a cease-fire between two fighting countries, the prescriptivists and the descriptivists, by dispelling myths about each of their camps. First and foremost, Garner outlines the war is happening between the lines of our favorite novels and poetry, and he describes what each camp stands for. Prescriptivists desire to instruct the world around them on how to use the language by enforcing, or at the very least informing the general public about the rules of grammar. They are sometimes described as conservative and are very concerned

“Authority and American Usage” written by David Foster Wallace, poses an argument about the English language, and the different beliefs of its usage. This essay was written in defense of Bryan A. Garner’s, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. His argument in “Authority and American Usage” is the difference the between prescriptivism perception and the descriptivism perception (Linguistic terms that could easily be made into smaller, more understandable words for people like me). Since the beginning of time, language has evolved. From biblical times, to Shakespearean times, to present day; the English language has been continuously changing since it’s birth and has no intentions on stopping.

George Orwell, in an essay from Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays titled “Politics and the English Language” (1950), argues that the English language, through a cyclical process of sloven language and foolish thought, has become “ugly and inaccurate.” He supports his argument by using expert opinion, metaphors, and historical context. Orwell’s purpose is to demonstrate the debasement of the English language in order to prompt writers to make a conscious change in their writing . He adopts an informal tone (“Look back throughout this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against”) for writers in a time of political turnover and rising superpowers.

The aim of having correct grammar is to ensure what is written is correctly understood. A sentence that contains grammatical errors can be difficult to read and can cause misunderstandings. It is important to use correct grammar whether writing or speaking to communicate effectively to help people get a better understanding and to express your communication more precisely and clearly.

George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, first published in 1946, talks about some “bad habits”, which have driven the English language in the wrong direction, that is, away from communicating ideas. In his essay he quotes five passages, each from a different author, which embody the faults he is talking about. He lists dying metaphors, operators, pretentious diction, and meaningless words as things to look out for in your own writing and the writing of others (593-595). He talks about political uses of the English language. Our language has become ugly and the ugliness impedes upon communication. Ugly uses of language have been reinforced and passed down in the population “even among people who should and do know

In George Orwell’s essay, “Politics And The English Language” Orwell discusses how the English language is changing negatively. His purpose is to show how modern writers, especially in politics, has become bogged down with the poor use of language. Orwell does this by using examples, critiques, and inductive reasoning. The author also has a serious tone that shows what he is talking about is very important to him and should be to his audience.

Improvement to my grammar is the second area I’ve developed in this course. “It’s the little things that matter”, said by many people, and the way this relates to my second reasoning is due to the fact little grammatical errors matter too. When writing papers, I learned the skill to reread my sentences repeatedly, and see if it sounds right as an overall sentence. This skill, not only helped improve my writing, but also my texting. Improving my grammar is also useful when creating a resume, and applying for jobs and even scholarships. Overall, it is a skill I am pleased I learned to develop, and hope it improves even more over time.

I am a storyteller. I derive great pleasure from gathering people and telling them a funny story from my past. I love to entertain my nephew with stories I make up on spot. The best times of my life were sitting around with my friends and playing roleplaying games (games where the players utilize their imagination and interact as a fictions character). Creating fiction is an area of composition I am fortunate to enjoy and be strong in. With all of this being said, my skills in grammar were always lacking. Being a millennial, I grew up thinking grammar was a task technology could handle. During my years in high school, my sentence structure was very basic and I did not feel a need to improve on it. During my time in ENC1101, I was subjected

While reading chapter six from Beyond Grammar Language, Power, and the Classroom, written by Mary R. Harmon and Marilyn J. Wilson, I began to realize how much we become caught up in the rules of the so-called Standard American English. It is sad because people are being judged on their dialect, which is a representation of who people are and where they are from. I have found myself correcting people that have a different dialect, or correcting people that say words that I have been told were not proper language, such as the word ain’t. Standard American English is something that is embedded in our brains at a young age and as we go through school; language is something teachers are constantly correcting children on. Reading about dialect has

Now you have internet and a lot of other effective ways how you can check your grammar and get notified if you are using vague words. Besides all of the possessions I have mentioned before peer reviewer is something that I have seen my growth in. Every time when our class had written an essay we have time to peer review the essays that we wrote. This helps everyone in many different aspects such as, fixing your mistakes, growing in fixing other peoples mistakes, and last but not least working on improving you grammar

There’s many reasons in how grammar can lead to success and one of them is in school. Obviously you’ll need grammar in order to academically achieve. For example like your lab reports, essays, poems, summaries, and etc. Your overall grade in your classes

Throughout twenty-centuries ago, writers thought that ordinary language and literary language were two different languages. But this is an analytical assumption. There is only one language, which

Specialists in descriptive grammar (linguists) examine the principles and patterns that underlie the use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. In contrast, prescriptive

He seeks to find underlying similarities across these “distinct” languages, to construct a general theory of a singular language. However, it seems as though he cannot be scientifically vindicated without the groundwork being laid down by many of the authors that he is critical of. Thus, it is particularly interesting that Chomsky seems to be so at odds with the idea of descriptivism. When Chomsky says, “Grammar should not be merely a record of the data of usage, but, rather, should offer an explanation for such data,” (587) he is acknowledging the usefulness, presumably to his own theories, of descriptive linguistics. He in fact recognizes the debt he owes when he says, “To me, it seems that [structural linguistics'] major achievement is to have provided a factual and a methodological basis that makes it possible to return to the problems that occupied the traditional universal grammarians...” (590) But he goes on to say, “On the other hand, it seems to me that the substantive contributions to the theory of language structure are few, and that, to a large extent, the concepts of modern linguistics constitute a retrogression as compared with universal grammar.” (590) Where the descriptivists see an end, Chomsky sees only the means, and is somewhat dismissive of them.

It has been noted that while considering changing word meanings is vital to the diachronic study of language, the notion and practice of studying them has been historically belittled as an intellectual pursuit. Semantic change is often irregular and arbitrary as a concept, as its causes are wide-ranging and multi-faceted. However, critics such as Willem B. Hollmann now give weight and notoriety to studying semantics synchronically . By considering individual cases, one can explain some word changes and apply common rules. These often occur intra-linguistically or through common social or political changes, especially surrounding class conflict. However, although we can catalogue the semantic change of similar or groups of words, word