The Battle for the English Language
3rd March 2014
For some time now, it has been customary to label those who write about grammar and usage as either prescriptivists or descriptivists. The former think there are “right” and “wrong” ways to say or write, while the latter claim that we can only record how people actually use language, since any widespread successful usage is, ipso facto, “right.” But as soon as we probe a little further, these two categories start to dissolve. In fact, there are two complementary pleasures to be had from reading contributions to this ever-popular genre. The first is that of watching the most beady-eyed prescriptivist waving through usages that would have put their prescriptivist ancestors in intensive care with advanced apoplexy. The other is the sight of the most laid-back descriptivists casually laying down a range of arbitrary diktats and prohibitions. And this is not accidental or just a matter of personal weakness. In reality, neither of these positions is sustainable in its pure form. Those who think anything goes and those who think that that means it goes to the dogs turn out to be not so far apart after all.
The truth is, not to put too fine a point on it, that every prescriptivist is screwed by history. They can’t avoid knowing that, on so many of the hot topics of grammar and meaning, what used to be right is now wrong and vice versa. But the descriptivists are caught in their own cleft stick without a paddle, too. In theory, their position might be summed up as, “If folks say it like that, then that’s how folks say it.” But just as no one is in practice a thorough-going relativist about knowledge or morals, however committed they may be to relativism as a theoretical position, so no descriptivist can, for example, stand by and watch foreigners mangling the language without invoking the category of “mistake.” In fact, the teaching of English as a foreign language is an interesting testing ground for all the general ideas put forward in these books. In that setting, there certainly are “rules” and there are “right” (and therefore “wrong”) ways. For TEFL teachers, saying “more tastier” can’t just be a matter of taste.