Talk:Linguistic prescription

"authorities whose judgment may be followed"

The article tells us:

Prescription presupposes authorities whose judgment may be followed by other speakers and writers. An authority may be a prominent writer or educator such as [...] Strunk and White in their Elements of Style for American English.

Anyone's judgment may be followed by other speakers and writers. There are lots of prescriptive books, and presumably not all the copies thereof merely sit on shelves gathering dust; instead, non-trivial numbers of people attempt to follow the judgments therein (whether sporadically or fanatically). Outside their joint production, White was a prominent writer but Strunk an obscure educator. I don't think that either is famous for prescriptivism outside this book. Is this book taken as an authority? By many people, yes it is. I imagine that it's a/the best-seller in its genre. If this is the claim that's being made here, I suggest rephrasing to make this clear. If OTOH there's a claim being made for quality or the respect of people who are genuinely experts on language, then I'd like to see a refutation of this. -- Hoary (talk) 09:46, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

PS I now think that I (sleepily?) misread/misunderstood. I'm now in a rush and can't reexamine the (non?) issue; I hope to return later. -- Hoary (talk) 03:11, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

The same as above, more completely:

Prescription presupposes authorities whose judgment may be followed by other speakers and writers. An authority may be a prominent writer or educator such as [[Henry Watson Fowler|H. W. Fowler]], whose ''[[Fowler's Modern English Usage|Modern English Usage]]'' defined the standard for [[British English]] for much of the 20th century,<ref>McArthur (1992) p. 414</ref> or [[William Strunk, Jr.|Strunk]] and [[E. B. White|White]] in their ''[[Elements of Style]]'' for [[American English]].

Try this:

Prescription presupposes authorities whose judgments may come to be followed by many other speakers and writers. For English, these authorities tend to be books. [[Henry Watson Fowler|H. W. Fowler]]'s ''[[Fowler's Modern English Usage|Modern English Usage]]'' was widely taken as an authority for [[British English]] for much of the 20th century,<ref>McArthur (1992) p. 414</ref>; [[William Strunk, Jr.|Strunk]] and [[E. B. White|White]]'s ''[[The Elements of Style]]'' has done similarly for [[American English]].

--Hoary (talk) 08:07, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. At some point, we should have citations from one or more secondary sources saying these works have been treated as authoritative in these particular publishing spheres. But I think this actually qualifies under "information must be verifiable with citations to reliable sources" (versus already verified with such citations), since the claims are common-sense not controversial.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:58, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

'Globalize' introduction?

Resolved

 – Tag removed after the reason for its placement was addressed by improving the breadth of the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:02, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

In 2017 User:Geekdiva suggested that the introduction needed to be globalized, and that other sections may need to clarify what languages are involved. The lead section doesn't have too many examples, but the ones it had were only English. I added one French dictionary and removed two English ones, but there are still three English guides and only one non-English one in the section. On the other hand, the later sections seem to refer to a number of languages and regions. I wonder if the {{Globalize}} template is still needed? Cnilep (talk) 06:09, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

"Grammar Nazi" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Grammar Nazi. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 May 23#Grammar Nazi until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tamzin (she/they, no pref.) | o toki tawa mi. 01:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

i just came across the term "prescriptivist" for the first time about 3 minutes ago, and i was wondering if it meant the same thing as "grammar nazi". after a quick online search, this seems to be the only place google wants to admit i could possibly find an answer to whether or not a clear consensus has been reached. i still find myself needing to post a question and wait for a response. i hope humanity at least survives to the point where ai can handle basic things like answering obscure questions from random internet users in real time. so, are they the same? Snarevox (talk) 07:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey there. Wikipedia is not a forum for discussions like these, I'm afraid. But you've more or less got it: A grammar nazi is someone who insists that other (native) users of a language follow "the rules", so they try to prescribe their idea of correct grammar and lexis on other people; a descriptivist approach does not posit any rules ex cathedra but rather tries to describe how the grammar and lexis are currently being used by native speakers. If in future you are interested in having questions like these answered more directly, give www.Quora.com a try and bring up those questions there. Trigaranus (talk) 08:47, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@Snarevox: I don't think these two things are the same. Linguistic prescription is about defining standard language. If I were to start writing here in my native Glasgow English and spell it as I pronounce it, you would soon know why you want a standard English. That's why language teachers, text editors and others are involved in prescriptive work of standardizing, and most of us think that's OK in principle, even if we want to scream about some of the opinions language teachers have sometimes voiced. Besides that, people often want advice on how to communicate well, and there are plenty of commentators ready to give such advice, some wisely, some less so. That's prescription, and it is broadly useful, even if it is sometimes done disasterously. By contrast, according to the dictionaries, a "grammar nazi" is a person who corrects other people's grammar in an annoyingly intrusive way, a self-important nark whose judgmentalism is unsolicited and unwelcome. That's really not what linguistic prescription is about.

Personally, though I would never use the phrase "grammar nazi", because I know what real Nazis were. Doric Loon (talk) 10:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

thank you both for replying..i wasnt really trying to have a discussion per se..i was actually just trying to more or less find out if they were the same and then i noticed the topic here on the talk page so i figured i would ask if a consensus had been reached in order to determine whether or not i might expect a grammar nazi redirect or possible subcategory in the future.. thanks again. Snarevox (talk) 22:31, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Oxford Companion to the English Language

The phrase

> Despite being apparent opposites, prescription and description are often considered complementary…

cites OECL p286. This page contains both "Descriptive and prescriptive grammar" and "Descriptivism and prescriptivism". The part about complementarity is in the former, which describes how grammars of languages are produced. But this section of the Wikipedia page is about the latter, the imposition of norms on a language. So I am marking it "not in citation given". Marnanel (talk) 14:33, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

unsupported claim about the Academie Francais

I address the claim 'French: The recommendations of the Académie française, a national body, are legally unenforceable, but they are often followed by standard French speakers.' Says who? Every single native French speaker I've met regard the Academie with varying shades of derision and contempt, and anyone can witness their futile attempts to prevent Anglicisms, Americanisms and the latest coinages from creeping into the common vernacular. Language, to the dismay of purists, is porous and increasingly so as the internet breaks down barriers even further. Language changes from the bottom up. Merriam Webster's recently added 690 words to their database. Oford Dictionaries regularly post updates to changes in their dictionaries.