lesserjoke:

turnabout-taisa:

Since I’m a student that’s transferring into a linguistics program in the fall (yay!), I thought it would be a good idea to track the linguistics tag, so I have been. But there’s just one thing about you guys that confuses me (And this is a serious question here, not a criticism).

Prescriptivism - Why do you hate it?

According to Wikipedia, Prescriptivism “…denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct. Its aims may be to establish a standard language, to teach what is perceived within a particular society to be correct forms of language, or to advise on effective communication.”

What’s so bad about that? Really. I don’t get it.

It essentially boils down to the fact that linguistics is a science. Linguists are concerned with accurately gathering data from the language that people are actually speaking, and the only way to do that is descriptively. Prescriptivism is an attempt to change language to an arbitrary set of standards — it has no place in the science of linguistics. That’s strike one. Then the particular standards that people apply often go against what linguists know to be true about language based on our studies (like saying that a double negative is illogical when plenty of languages use them quite regularly). That’s strike two.

Finally, people often use their judgments of what’s right and wrong in language to discriminate against people using the ‘wrong’ form. Calling dialects ‘poor grammar’ or calling their speakers unintelligent is not just unscientific and scientifically misinformed; it’s an unfair attack on real human beings. That’s strike three, and that’s why a lot of us who have studied linguistics and are interested in social justice feel the need to speak out against the hateful sort of prescriptivism that people often perpetuate.

waitingforturnips:

its-wallie:

waitingforturnips:

I find it interesting that while many people on Tumblr are obsessed with correcting spelling and punctuation errors, nobody has any problem with the innovative grammatical structures that become popular through novelty. It’s okay to use non-standard grammar, like turning verbs into nouns (‘all the feels’, ‘all the cries’ etc) and leaving out lexical verbs (‘I can’t even’), but if someone mixes up your/you’re and there/their/they’re then suddenly you face the wrath of the Spelling Police who will persecute you for your ‘terrible grammar’ and for ‘butchering’ the English language.

And yet some non-standard spellings are accepted, like whut/wut/wat and the use of text-message forms like ‘y’ and ‘u’, though I guess the reason they’re accepted is that they’re a deliberate deviation from the norm rather than what could be viewed as a mistake. It would be interesting to investigate whether the people who feel the need to correct spelling ‘errors’ always use standard grammar and orthography or whether they also follow innovative trends that deviate from the standard. And if the latter is the case, why is one deviation acceptable and not the other?

Wow, this is a really interesting question. 

I don’t really consider myself a “grammar nazi” - I can’t remember the last time I corrected someone grammatically that didn’t ask me to - but errors like there/they’re/their really do bug me, while “omfg what even” doesn’t. I am egregiously guilty of the latter type of linguistic crime to be sure.

I think that to an extent my irritation ties in with one of your tags: “y u no let people spell how they want?” Mistakes like they’re/their/there commonly aren’t choices, and choosing a spelling out of ignorance or carelessness rather than playfulness is unfortunate. YMMV on how unfortunate it seems, of course. 

However, using “there” when a writer means to ascribe possession violates (“their”) an expectation that I had. I explected the writer to discuss a place, or an object that is being possessed, or expand on an action that is occurring, and then it turns out that’s not what’s going on. This, on a mostly subconscious level, can be irritating.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be bothered at all if the writer used “der” or “dere” or the like. I think this is because “der” is so clearly wrong, so far divorced from any kind of officially accepatble use of the English language, that I will assume that it’s a joke, and dang, it is funny! (Again, YMMV) 

Also, “der” comes without preconceived ideas about the context. It turns the more specific words “they’re/their/there” into one that is very vague. Just like when  I come across the word “bear” in a sentence, I know that I’m going to have to spend a little extra time parsing the meaning, whether it means the animal or to carry. It’s just less irritating to know what I’m getting into up front. 

anyhoo dems mai thots

Thanks for your thoughts!

Firstly I have to take issue with the concept of a “linguistic crime”, even though you meant it jokingly. From an objective point of view, one either employs the standard or deviates from it, neither are “right” or “wrong”. Calling something a “linguistic crime” is a subjective and non-scientific point of view.

I think there’s a double standard with spelling going on here. It’s okay to violate the rules when you want to, but suddenly the rules become very important when you think that somebody else doesn’t know how to use them. (Which suggests that so-called “grammar-nazis” are probably more concerned with flaunting their “superior” language skills than protecting the integrity of the English language, as they claim to do.) Once again, from an objective, descriptive point of view, neither spelling is more correct than another, because spelling is entirely conventional (and standardised spelling of English is a relatively new phenomenon; in the not too distant past there was much greater freedom in spelling. Even Shakespeare didn’t spell things the same way twice.) So a spelling can be “wrong” in terms of the system, but the system is conventional rather than absolute. We invented it and we can change it if we want to. Or ignore it. We’re not it’s* slaves. :)

I definitely understand your point about the meaning of the spelling jarring with the meaning of the context, but I would argue that this doesn’t actually hinder comprehension: even if somebody spells ‘there’ as ‘their’, you will always know from the context what they meant. So from a personal point of view it may be annoying, but it doesn’t make communication any more difficult. (‘There’, ‘their’, and ‘they’re’ all sound the same when we speak and that doesn’t hinder communication, so there’s no real need for each to have different spellings.)

Also, I would argue that variation with there/their/they’re isn’t always the result of somebody attempting to conform to standard and getting it wrong - if people communicate largely with other people who exhibit variation, than it makes sense that they would exhibit the same features (just like dialects: if you’re born in one region you acquire that dialect, regardless of whether it is considered non-standard or ‘incorrect’ by other speakers). So I see interchangeability of spellings such as your/you’re and there/their/they’re as variation rather than a mistake. (I wrote a post about this here, if you’re interested.) Most people don’t know that variation is actually a normal feature of language.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts! Feel free to debate or disagree if you like.

*this was a genuine typing error and I’m leaving it here to back up my point. You understood me despite the stray apostrophe!

mapsofmymind:

You can leave. 

I literally would punch you all in the face if I could. 

It’s one thing to prefer the “correct” usage, but damnit stop correcting it every single time and blowing it out of proportion and demeaning people because god forbid they were doing something like multi tasking and used the wrong one. You have no right to point that out to make yourself feel superior for catching it. It’s not that big of a deal. 

Some people just try to be correct with it and that’s whatever, I don’t care, but when you get an attitude and insult someone’s intelligence because at the moment- that wasn’t the most important thing, or they slipped, you look like a jerk.

Stop it, and shut up. There’s almost always context and you know damn well if they mean you are or your. Okay? It’s not the end of the world.