Descriptivism, Prescriptivism, and ????
Here are links to all posts in this project of reviewing and supplementing the splendid book
The Lexicographer’s Dilemma by Jack Lynch.
- Introduction
What does the rise of “proper” English have in common with a physics conundrum about gravity? - Babies, Names, and Snobs
We name words by wrapping them in square brackets to avoid overloading more common conventions. - Descriptivism, Prescriptivism, and ????
We add a new ISM to the familiar duo of attitudes toward English language usage: readabilism. - Why is English Spelling Such a Mess?
An insight into the difficulty of spelling reform has wide-ranging significance, far beyond spelling. - Ambiguity Sucks!
Ambiguity is almost always at least a little harmful to clear communication. It can be disastrous. - What is the Point of Punctuation?
Careful punctuation helps avoid unwanted ambiguity. - Yogi Berra’s Paradox
Sometimes bad English is good English that’s good because it’s bad. - Blood & Gold End This Series
Apart from a concern about the examples on 2 late pages in the book, I could applaud those pages until my hands bleed.
One trouble with categories is that so many of the interesting and important people and things in the real world do not fit neatly into them. Tho wary of categories, I feel a need to introduce another one, alongside the descriptivism and prescriptivism (reviewed below) that are commonly used to categorize writings/writers that deal with the English language.
To oversimplify somewhat:
- A descriptivist says how people actually use the language.
- A prescriptivist says how people should use the language, according to various rules.
The captions under the following images for these attitudes link to notes and credits at the end of this post.
- A readabilist says how people should use the language, so as to communicate clearly. (The caption under the following image links to a note on its relevance.)
Communicating clearly is not the same as abiding by rules. Do U want to be clear? Some of the prescriptivists’ rules are helpful, as is attention to the descriptivists’ findings. Some of the prescriptivists’ rules are harmful, as is being lazy in ways that descriptivists find to be common. As with geometry, there is no royal road to clarity. Various examples will be in later posts. A quick preliminary example appears later in this post.
I am a proud readabilist. I try to write clearly. I fail and try again. Sometimes I succeed. I try to recommend ways to write clearly. I fail and try again. I will recommend a prescriptivist’s rule that seems helpful and disrecommend one that seems harmful. If something seems helpful in one context and harmful in another, I will try to sort things out rather than claim that one size fits all.
Any suggestions of alternative names for readabilism? I was disappointed when Google told me that [lucidism] is already in use as the name of a religion, as is [claritism]. [Communicationism] is a pejorative term for the kind of reductionism that attributes conflicts to failures of communication. I had better grab [readabilism] while I can.
Example 3.1: Split Infinitives
On page 19, Lynch scorches the extreme prescriptivists who make sweeping bogus claims about enhancing clarity for long lists of rules, including inanities like the rule against splitting an infinitive. This rule was made up by prigs with too much free time who were enamored of Latin, a language with no blank space inside an infinitive where anything might be inserted.
Prescriptivists who claim devotion to clarity while peddling such drivel remind me of pseudoconservatives in US politics, who claim devotion to fiscal responsibility while peddling tax cuts for the same tiny fraction of the population that has been siphoning away wealth from everybody else for decades (while the national debt increases).
Tho the rhetoric of extreme prescriptivists may sound readabilist, the conduct is definitely not readabilist. Fretting about where else to put an adverb that wants to follow [to] may not be directly harmful, but it siphons away time and energy from serious work on clarity.
Image Notes and Credits
An antenna from the array in a radio telescope is emblematic of the spirit of descriptivism. Let’s see what is out there (and maybe try to explain it).
The clothes and facial expression of the man making the thumb-down gesture suggest that he is an arrogant jerk. This caricature of prescriptivism is appropriate at this admittedly simplistic stage in the discussion (and at any stage for some extreme prescriptivists). Nuance will come later.
Back in 2013, I photographed a daylily flower in my yard because I wanted to show it to a flower lover in a nursing home. I did not want to be at all arty. I just wanted her to see the flower clearly and completely, w/o puzzling about what I had photographed or about the technologies that let me show her a long-gone flower on my laptop computer. I wanted the wizardry to be transparent and therefore invisible to the casual eye.
The clear view (thru the photo to see the daylily) is emblematic of the spirit of readabilism. While it is OK if the reader pauses briefly a few times to admire how well an idea has been conveyed, the reader should never need a shovel to unearth ideas buried by obscure writing.
Mellow Curmudgeon 