Language Prescription

Reviews / Votes

In this useful and illuminating collection, contributors methodically demonstrate whether specific norms affect language change and how prescriptive attitudes index group or individual identities-multilingual, postcolonial, national, religious, professional. Indeed, linguists should be led to question their identification with 'descriptivism', as binaries like 'descriptive vs prescriptive' are examined and dismantled. * Carol Percy, University of Toronto, Canada * In linguistics, prescription is usually opposed to description. But this volume explores a variety of ways in which this binary can be seen to function as only one of many. Several of these represent truly innovative perspectives, and will serve to inspire further study in this highly topical field of research. * Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, The Netherlands * A rich and diverse collection exploring competing and overlapping values represented in prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language. With historical and contemporary data from English and other languages, the authors demonstrate that the continuum of complex values between the poles undercuts a binary distinction and much else that has handicapped analyses couched in antipodal terms. * Edward Finegan, Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California, USA * The editors of this volume have drawn together a really interesting set of papers that show the range of approaches that can be taken when accommodating a prescriptive perspective in a descriptive study of language. I have not even scratched the surface of these interesting contributions in this all-too-brief review. Readers working in the field of prescriptivism will find some of the contributions familiar, but having the range of approaches gathered together, with each chapter containing its own list of references, makes this a very useful resource. Newcomers to the field will find it an invaluable starting point for any number of investigations. -- Adrian John Stenton, Leiden University, Netherlands * LINGUIST List 32.2267 *