4 Are You a Descriptivist or a Prescriptivist? The Meaning of the Term Descriptivism and the Values of Those Who Use It

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Contributors vii
4. 1 Introduction: Values and Binaries in Language Evaluation 1
5. Part 1 Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism: An Untenable Binary
6. 2 Is/Ought: Hume’s Guillotine, Linguistics and Standards of Language 15
7. 3 Inferring Prescriptivism: Considerations Inspired by Hobongan and Minority Language Documentation 32
8. 4 Are You a Descriptivist or a Prescriptivist? The Meaning of the Term Descriptivism and the Values of Those Who Use It 46
9. Part 2: Prescriptivism vs Linguistics: An Unnecessary Binary
10. 5 The Linguistic Value of Investigating Historical Prescriptivism 73
11. 6 Examining the Split Infi nitive: Prescriptivism as a Constraint in Language Variation and Change 95
12. 7 Language Should Be Pure and Grammatical: Values in Prescriptivism in the Netherlands 1917–2016 121
13. 8 Maintaining Power through Language Correction: A Case of L1 Education in Post-Soviet Lithuania 145
14. Part 3: Responding to Correctness: Personal Values and Identity
15. 9 ‘Good Guys’ vs ‘Bad Guys’: Constructing Linguistic Identities on the Basis of Usage Problems 173
16. 10 What Do ‘Little Aussie Sticklers’ Value Most? 194
17. 11 Grammar Next to Godliness: Prescriptivism and the Tower of Babel 212
18. 12 Linguistic Cleanliness is Next to Godliness – But Not for Conservative Anabaptists 231
19. Part 4 Judging Correctness: Practitioner Values and Variation
20. 13 Fowler’s Values: Ideology and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) 251
21. 14 US Copy Editors, Style Guides and Usage Guides and their Impact on British Novels 264
22. 15 Practicing Prescriptivism: How Copy Editors Treat Prescriptive Rules 292
23. Index 307