An Era of Prescriptivism?

So what is linguistic prescriptivism or prescriptive grammar? The answer in short is the rules of a language or more importantly whether you should stick to the rules of a language. As with everything to do with language this depends on context. For example, if a young child misspells a word in a cute letter to Santa then the response is more than likely to be, 'ahh, how sweet!'. However, if a journalist misspells a word then they are seen to be careless or worse still ignorant and not to be believed. Of course it could be argued that not as much time is spent on learning to spell correctly but there is emphasis on using spell check and proofreading if you wish to be taken seriously. This suggests that prescriptivism is important when spelling. Think of the fuss that is made when someone uses an American form in a British publication. There is no reason that someone would not be able to understand, 'color, labor or favor' yet in certain circles it is just not acceptable. English grammar also seems to be very prescriptivist, even though if you know the rules it is much easier to be creative when breaking them. Actual lexis seems to be a lot less prescriptive and we seem to embrace new words, as well as synonyms and antonyms for existing ones all of the time. Our individual word banks are ever increasing and now that dictionaries have gone online they can be as extensive as is necessary.

So why is it OK to be descriptive linguistically? Is it easier to decode a word as opposed to a grammatical structure? Probably yes, or at least if not you can ask for it to be explained or even consult Alexa or another virtual friend. Using different words in different parts of the country is after all one of the reasons that Caxton wanted standardisation, a process which he assisted when introducing the printing press to England in 1476, or there abouts. It has to be remembered that at that time people stuck to their own little village on the whole, so were unable to understand the neighbouring areas. However, even if you are a recluse in today's society you can access most of the English speaking world from your armchair, via technology or thanks to Caxton the printed word. Simple access to different forms of English has meant that pronunciation no longer needs to be prescriptive, an example of this is seen in BBC newsreaders with regional accents, which is strangely still relatively new.

To sum up it is still a tricky subject and the real answer is that you need to know the rules but you do not necessarily have to follow them. Nonetheless, you have to appreciate the rules of audience, purpose and form.