What happened to all the, like, prescriptivists?
A tweet by Julia Ioffe from 10/4/2022 (image below because twitter embedding seems to be broken…):
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Prescriptivist statutory interpretation?
The title of this post combines two topics that are popular with the Language Log audience, and that are not usually discussed together. It is also the title of a LAWnLinguistics post from 2012, shortly after the publication of Reading Law, a book about legal interpretation that was co-authored by Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner. […]
Maybe the prescriptivists are right
… at least about the use of "summative that" in certain contexts. Thus one of Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage is "Vague Reference": Vague reference is a common problem in sentences where “this,” “it,” “which” or other such words don’t refer back to any one specific word or phrase, but a whole situation. […]
George Fox, Prescriptivist
Jen wrote to inform me that today, being William Penn's birthday, is International Talk Like a Quaker Day. Jen explains that I like to combine it with my pirate talk from International Talk Like a Pirate Day. "Arrr, thee must give us all thy money to donate to the Friends Service Committee, or we will […]
Prescriptivist pain
9 Chickweed Lane, for June 15, illustrates something about prescriptivist pain:
Prescriptivist Science
Is there any "prescriptivist science"? Could there be any? The reaction of some linguists will be that "prescriptivist science" is as much as a contradiction in terms as "creation science" is. But I disagree.
Intergenerational cycles of peeving?
In a recent article in Psychology Today, Nick Morgan proposes a new theory about the psychodynamics of prescriptivist peeving ("Why Bad Grammar Activates Our Fight-or-Flight Response", 12/14/2023): Does grammar matter? And did you have a teacher in your youth who insisted on drumming the rules of good grammar into you—and was that teacher on the […]
Where have all the peevers gone?
Back in the fall of 2022, I asked "What happened to all the, like, prescriptivists?". I still don't have any actual counts, but I continue to find fewer instances of prescriptivist peeving in my various media feeds and foraging.
Linguistic aversion therapy?
Rick Rubenstein commented on yesterday's post ("What happened to all the, like, prescriptivists?"): Are there any proven therapies available for folks like me who, despite seeing the light decades ago, can't keep from wincing at "violations" of prescriptivist rules ingrained (mostly self-ingrained) during childhood? I want to be totally unfazed by "The team with the […]
Pronouns, gender, number: They were indeed a prophet
An image symbolizing how American English pronoun usage has changed since 2004 — in undergrad residences at Penn, these buttons were distributed for use in start-of-semester meetings this fall:
I feel like "I feel like"
[This is a guest post by Pamela Kyle Crossley] Just read the blog post on this. I feel like "I feel like" is one of those passive-aggressive tics that came in in the 1980/1990s, related to that thing where people turned statements into questions by raising their pitch at the end of a sentence (which […]
Aspects of the Theory of Syntithology
From John Brewer: Not sure if Language Log typically has a "travel page" section, but those readers in or near the NYC area who are vaccinated or otherwise not locked down might be interested in an exhibit at the Grolier Club in Manhattan that I visited a few days ago and will remain there until […]