Prescriptive Approach to the Language

According to the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language by David Crystal, prescriptivism in grammar is an authoritarian view based on the assumption that one variety of a language should be valued higher than others. Adherents to this approach are certain that this one variety should be imposed on the whole speech community. Prescriptivists value the standard written language or the formal spoken language reflecting literary style, which is mostly encountered in dictionaries and grammar books.

According to the speech by Dr John McWhorter on Prescriptive grammar, that I have recently listened to in the You Tube, there are a lot of people who make mistakes in their spontaneous speech, and  prescriptive approach to the language states that people should always be careful so as not to make mistakes in their speech. This approach prescribes rules to the language. Further in his speech, McWhorter opposes the Prescriptive approach to the Descriptive approach, the aim of which is to describe the language. Followers of this approach describe and explain the patterns of usage found in all varieties of the language, and they think it natural that there are variation in language usage as language is always changing. They do not think that dialects that don’t follow the recognized rules are “incorrect” or “illogical”. It is interesting to mention that Crystal thinks that the notion of absolute correctness is inadequate to explain the cases when one person varies in usage on different occasions (for example, in case of formal vs informal speech). Instead, he brings forward the notion of absolute appropriateness, i.e. the suitability of a usage to a situation. For example, contracted forms are widely acceptable in informal speech and writing, but they are unacceptable in formal writing. Thus, we can conclude that the context greatly influences the usage of certain patterns.

Crystal assumes that most people hold a mixture of prescriptive and descpriptive views. For example, linguist-parents often forbid their children to use language they do not like. Similarly, a prescriptivist-tourist might admire a dialect non-standard speech.