Definition:
A set of norms or rules governing how a language should or should not be used rather than describing the ways in which a language is actually used.
See also:Observations:
- "There has always been a tension between the descriptive and prescriptive functions of grammar. Currently, descriptive grammar is dominant among theorists, but prescriptive grammar is taught in the schools and exercises a range of social effects."
(Ann Bodine, "Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar," in The Feminist Critique of Language, ed. by Deborah Cameron. Routledge, 1998) - "To many people in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the language was indeed seriously unwell. It was suffering from a raging disease of uncontrolled usage. . . .
"There was an urgency surrounding the notion of a standard language, in the eighteenth century. People needed to know who they were talking to. Snap judgments were everything, when it came to social position. And things are not much different today. We make immediate judgments based on how people dress, how they do their hair, decorate their bodies--and how they speak and write. It is the first bit of discourse that counts. . . .
"The prescriptive grammarians went out of their way to invent as many rules as possible which might distinguish polite from impolite speech. They didn't find very many--just a few dozen, a tiny number compared with all the thousands of rules of grammar that operate in English. But these rules were propounded with maximum authority and severity, and given plausibility by the claim that they were going to help people to be clear and precise. As a result, generations of schoolchildren would be taught them, and confused by them."
(David Crystal, The Fight for English. Oxford Univ. Press, 2006)
Also Known As: normative grammar, prescriptivism
