/lit/ - Literature

It's also the last refuge of the redditor losing an argument.

Seems to be quite common among snowflakes too.

Descriptivism is the ultimate midwit position. Nobody is a platonic prescriptivist, that's a strawman position. Anyone with half a brain realizes that real prescriptivism means respecting that certain structures have become established in the firmament, and the more complex your structures are, the more you can play with the rules and do beautiful things by mastering them. Even if you don't know this, you should still know by instinct that a disgusting pleb annihilating entire tenses and moods from the language for the sake of his "convenience" and "authentic lived experience" is degenerative. It should give off the same stinky smell as an inbred monkeyman from the bayou.

so replace one form of umm ackshully pedantry with another

>>17024856
This post is so bitter I can taste it. I think you're just mad that your only talent -- being able to distinguish between your/you're and who/whom -- is now nothing but a party trick. You're like a technically proficient painter who can produce only tasteless garbage.

>>17024902
post hit a nerve, did it? anon is completely right, you know. and don't accuse me of samefagging, please

>>17024856
Descriptivism is a prescriptivist position. You’re never going to escape have normative attitudes towards language.

>>17024963
Go read a few books on linguistics/philology then come back and tell me if you still think petty prescriptivism ("it's whom not who!") is a sane position to hold. You won't, because nobody who studies language does.

>>17024982
>Descriptivism is a prescriptivist position
Subjectivism is an objectivist position

just ebin

>>17025005
all your "studies" and you can't respond to the first person who argues against you

>>17025852
You didn't make an argument. What do you want me to respond to? (Oh no I ended a sentence in a preposition!)

ok but your still a fag for writing like a retard lol

>>17026135
This I can accept

>>17026017
here is the argument for prescriptivism >>17024856, not surprised that you failed to read it

>>17026229
All I see is someone who doesn't understand descriptivism. A descriptivist isn't someone who believes "anything goes". A descriptivist is simply someone who lets colloquial use of a language dictate what the grammar of the language is, not the other way round. We all follow the same linguistic structures, but those structures also evolve. A prescriptivist is someone who refuses to move on. It's futile, get over it.

Have you ever worked an office job where you get 100+ emails a day? Fucking people have no clue how to write

>>17026255
he clearly makes the case for upholding established structures
>Anyone with half a brain realizes that real prescriptivism means respecting that certain structures have become established in the firmament, and the more complex your structures are, the more you can play with the rules and do beautiful things by mastering them
So there.
>A prescriptivist is someone who refuses to move on. It's futile, get over it.
No. Are you aware of how linguistic change has been retarded in the past 400 years because of printing, grammar, education, etc.? Clearly it is not entirely futile

>>17026264
Another person mischaracterising descriptivism. One again, there's a difference between suggesting that people spell correctly and write in a coherent manner, and trying to enforce useless archaic rules that nobody follows in speech. All prescriptivism does is lead to awkwardly written English that sounds like that Godawful formalese shit you see in the business world.

>>17026276
>Are you aware of how linguistic change has been retarded in the past 400 years
Yet the English of 400 years ago looks entirely different to the English of today. Clearly it is futile. All you're doing is guaranteeing a sore ass in your old age when everybody will be speaking a very different dialect and you'll be still clinging on NO IT'S NOT "YOU AND ME" ITS "YOU AND I!!!!"

Actually, the only true language was lost so long ago that none of our current words have any meaning. Speak however you like, because you cannot say anything at all.

>>17026308
The English of 400 years ago is much more readable than the english of 500 or 600 years ago - there is a difference, don't even try to deny it - in fact linguistic change seems to have slowed down greatly in recent times
Even if linguistic change cannot be completely averted, it can be retarded a lot - and the pros of having a stable language are many and obvious, that we should slow it down

>>17025823
where's the joke

>>17026276
this might be the first post I've seen on 4chan that uses "retarded" as a non-insulting verb

I'm a very big fan of being able to easily read things written 400 years ago. If the choice is between Shakespeare or the twenty twitter lines every ugly white bitch says the choice is obvious.

>>17026505
This isn't fair at all mate

>>17024828
I used to be like that when I was studying for the SATs.

well, in my opinion that'd be like holy glorious great for the melancholic art what did he can't even give propellers end of course we tried to survive in the bridge because they're basically nightmare with a real man
do you get it

>>17027229
You don't understand what the discussion is about.

Language is an ever-changing and developing expression of human personality, and does not grow well under rigorous direction. — C. L. Wrenn, The English Language

What grammarians say should be has perhaps less influence on what shall be than even the more modest of them realize; usage evolves itself little disturbed by their likes & dislikes. And yet the temptation to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand is sometimes irresistible. — H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

>>17024828
things do be like that tho

>>17027229
Holy glorious or glory holeous? Hallelujah!

Eye of to ghoti.

>>17026277
What if english changes to become more incoherent, i.e. two words with separate meanings merging into one?

>>17027399
hallelujah
>>17027339
well, to add more depth and to be more frank what is just from another me form of the arguement is what would you separate to meaning falsehood of one's made up the from the actual of reality. right?

>>17024828
Grammar is gay. Who gives a shit about the object or subject or subjunctive mood?

>>17027386
Notice how every one worth listening to has the same pragmatic view on language?

>>17028481
Except, of course, the grammarians who established the rules in the first place

>>17024828
Maybe you should proofread your sentences, faggot.

>>17028528
The process is like that of defining words. A lexicographer compiles a dictionary of the present meaning of words. Then some old farts spend the next fifty years forcing everyone to use those definitions despite them being dated.

>>17024828
Don't worry. Most native English speakers never cross the threshold of the conversational, let alone the literary one.