Language Prescription: Values, Ideologies and Identity(170 Multilingual Matters)

This book is a detailed examination of social connections to language evaluation with a specific focus on the values associated with both prescriptivism and descriptivism. The chapters, written by authors from many different linguistic and national backgrounds, use a variety of approaches and methods to discuss values in linguistic prescriptivism. In particular, the chapters break down the traditional binary approaches that characterize prescriptive discourse to create a view of the complex phenomena associated with prescriptivism and the values of those who practice it. Most importantly, this volume continues serious academic conversations about prescriptivism and lays the foundation for continued exploration.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Jacob D. Rawlins and Don Chapman: Introduction Part 1: Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism: An Untenable Binary Chapter 1. John E. Joseph: Is/Ought: Hume’s Guillotine, Linguistics, and Standards of Language Chapter 2. Marla Perkins: Inferring Prescriptivism: Considerations Inspired by Hobongan and Minority Language Documentation Chapter 3. Don Chapman: Are You a Descriptivist or a Prescriptivist? The Meaning of the Term Descriptivism and the Values of those Who Use it Part 2: Prescriptivism vs. Linguistics: An Unnecessary Binary Chapter 4. Lieselotte Anderwald: The Linguistic Value of Investigating Historical Prescriptivism Chapter 5. Viktorija Kostadinova: Examining the Split Infinitive: Prescriptivism as a Constraint in Language Variation and Change Chapter 6. Marten van der Meulen: Language Should be Pure and Grammatical: Values in Prescriptivism in the Netherlands 1917–2016 Chapter 7. Loreta Vaicekauskienė: Maintaining Power through Language Correction: A Case of L1 Education in Post-Soviet Lithuania Part 3: Responding to Correctness: Personal Values and Identity Chapter 8. Carmen Ebner: “Good Guys” vs “Bad Guys”: Constructing Linguistic Identities on the Basis of Usage Problems Chapter 9. Alyssa A. Severin and Kate Burridge: What do “Little Aussie Sticklers” Value Most? Chapter 10. Nola Stephens-Hecker: Grammar Next to Godliness: Prescriptivism and the Tower of Babel Chapter 11. Kate Burridge: Linguistic Cleanliness is Next to Godliness—But Not for Conservative Anabaptists Part 4: Judging Correctness: Practitioner Values and Variation Chapter 12. Giuliana Russo: Fowler’s values: Ideology and a Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) Chapter 13. Linda Pillière: US Copy-Editors, Style Guides, and Usage Guides and their Impact on British Novels Chapter 14. Jonathon Owen: Practicing Prescriptivism: How Copyeditors Treat Prescriptive Rules Index 

About the Author :
Don Chapman is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at Brigham Young University, USA. His research focuses on the history of the English language, prescriptivism, and the intersection of those two topics. Jacob D. Rawlins is an Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department at Brigham Young University, USA. His research focuses on the editing and publishing profession, interactive data displays, and applied rhetorical theory.

Review :
In this useful and illuminating collection, contributors methodically demonstrate whether specific norms affect language change and how prescriptive attitudes index group or individual identities—multilingual, postcolonial, national, religious, professional. Indeed, linguists should be led to question their identification with ‘descriptivism’, as binaries like ‘descriptive vs prescriptive’ are examined and dismantled. In linguistics, prescription is usually opposed to description. But this volume explores a variety of ways in which this binary can be seen to function as only one of many. Several of these represent truly innovative perspectives, and will serve to inspire further study in this highly topical field of research. A rich and diverse collection exploring competing and overlapping values represented in prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language. With historical and contemporary data from English and other languages, the authors demonstrate that the continuum of complex values between the poles undercuts a binary distinction and much else that has handicapped analyses couched in antipodal terms. The editors of this volume have drawn together a really interesting set of papers that show the range of approaches that can be taken when accommodating a prescriptive perspective in a descriptive study of language. I have not even scratched the surface of these interesting contributions in this all-too-brief review. Readers working in the field of prescriptivism will find some of the contributions familiar, but having the range of approaches gathered together, with each chapter containing its own list of references, makes this a very useful resource. Newcomers to the field will find it an invaluable starting point for any number of investigations.