/lit/ - Literature

>>11859009
the expression is once and for all anon
descriptivists btfo'd

>>11859009
you really should be on the side of prescriptivism

There's no escaping prescriptivism.

I'm mostly a descriptivist but behead those who write "should of"

>>11859019
OP here. Would you say my typo was 'ironic'? I'm a prescriptivist by the way.

No one with an inkling of understanding of language is a prescriptivist

what are the arguments agaisnt prescriptivism in an ironist sense?

>>11859009
A lot of you don't seem to understand that there's no debate here. It's like saying 'Empiricism vs. Ethics'. All professional linguists are descriptivists.

I stopped taking prescribed antidepressants and feel a lot better now.

>>11859009
There is no debate, you wouldn’t correct a dolphin for breaching the water incorrectly, or an elephant for not blowing its trunk correctly

You adapt your language based on the community or individuals that you are attempting to connect with. If it’s the educated world, then you speak and write in academic English.

>>11859966
>If it’s the educated world, then you speak and write in academic English.
That's very eurocentric, classist and educationist notion, anon. And, by extention, racist and sexist.

>>11859915
Providing academic legitimacy to certain forms of speech through your descriptivism ultimately amounts to a form of prescriptivism.

We don't adhere to prescriptivism because it's right, we adhere to it because it's useful. You need to have standards, or everything goes to shit.

The natural state of the world is disorganised garbage just barely functional enough to get by. It is only with careful attention and constant effort that more than this can be maintained. Powerlines and computers don't grow on trees - they need to be built and maintained at constant unceasing cost and effort, so that we can enjoy their benefits. And the cost and effort is worth it, because the benefits are real.

Same goes for prescriptivism. Having a 'perfect' technically correct language is no more objectively valuable than having functional powerlines, but we'd all rather have it than not.

>>11859966
>You adapt your language based on the community or individuals that you are attempting to connect with.

So "registers" in other words? This isn't incompatible with prescriptivism.

I don't know that this isn't already an established concept but I'd call what I'd argue for "utilitarian prescriptivism". The function of language is facilitate accurate communication as effectively and efficiently as possible (or at least that accuracy and efficiency are preferable to inaccuracy and inefficiency). Next I'd posit that consistency and breadth are the key characteristics of an accurate and efficient language. The conclusion, therefore, is that we ought to promote and regulate semantics/etymology and grammar. By actively maintaining grammatical consistency and vocabulary depth we ensure that the language is both as clear and unambiguous as possible as well as as easy to learn as possible.

>>11860627
>mfw

I haven't read any of this but based on skiming Wikipedia and Peirce's catagories, both.
Secondly you have brute facts, or descriptions, which in order to be meditated upon need to be 'prescribed' or thirdness, a law or generality following from the description, that allows the description to be interpreted.
So description always happens before perscription,but can't be meaningful unless perscribed, because a first or potential cannot become of a description that is not related to it's object. it's has to be mediated by law. Like the triadic relation, description and perscription are inseparable. Or that description can happen without a subsequent perscription, but nothing will come of it.

>>11861525
>I haven't read any of this but based on skiming Wikipedia and Peirce's catagories, both.
I like this just as it is.