Descriptivism
Descriptivism in linguistics is an approach that focuses on describing how language is actually used by its speakers, rather than prescribing how it should be used. It emphasizes the study of language as it naturally occurs in everyday communication, and seeks to understand and document the diverse forms and variations of language. This approach is often contrasted with prescriptivism, which emphasizes adherence to specific rules and norms in language usage.
6 Key excerpts on "Descriptivism"
eBook - ePubVoices of Man
The Meaning and Function of Language
- Mario Pei(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For the purpose of learning to speak and understand a language for conversational use, there is no denying that stress, particularly at the outset, should be placed on the spoken rather than on the written language; on the general colloquial standard rather than on the rarefied tongue of antiquated literature (but not on substandard or dialect forms, save for specific purposes); on the sounds of the spoken language (but only in close conjunction with basic grammatical patterns and a basic practical vocabulary) ; and with general avoidance of that so-called “cultural” material which, whether it be philological, literary, folkloristic or anything else, distracts the learner from his basic purpose, which is to learn the language, not to learn about the language. In connection with the purely scientific study of language and languages, the basic philosophy of Descriptivism, as outlined by De Saussure, may be accepted in its entirety. Its present-day extensions are something else. It should not be allowed to crowd the historical, comparative approach out of the picture, as it too often tends to do. Its methodology, in general, is not applicable to historical problems, which should be solved on the basis of available evidence, not of descriptivistic theory. Descriptivists should realize, once and for all, that a methodology that is the only one applicable in the case of Kwakiutl or Choctaw need not be the only one applicable to French or German. Recent extensions of Descriptivism are many, varied, and, in some aspects, laudable. To mention only two, we have the structuralism propounded by the Prague School and outlined in its possible historical applications in A...
eBook - ePubTheory in Social and Cultural Anthropology
An Encyclopedia
- R. Jon McGee, Richard L. Warms(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Alex François Alex François Maïa Ponsonnet Maïa Ponsonnet Descriptive Linguistics Descriptive linguistics 184 187 Descriptive Linguistics Descriptive linguistics (henceforth DL) is the scientific endeavor to systematically describe the languages of the world in their diversity, based on the empirical observation of regular patterns in natural speech. Definitions The core principle of DL is that each language constitutes an autonomous system, which must be described in its own terms. Modern descriptive linguists carry out detailed empirical surveys on a language. After collecting language samples from speakers, they analyze the data so as to identify the components of the system and the principles that underlie its organization. Through its commitment to the empirical description of speakers’ actual practices and to the diversity of languages as creations of linguistic communities, DL is closely allied with the social sciences. The research agenda of DL can be contrasted with a number of related yet distinct approaches to language. Anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics study, each in its own way, the interaction between cultural or social factors and language use; by contrast, DL focuses on the structural properties of the languages themselves. Historical linguistics studies the diachronic processes of language change, whereas DL focuses on the synchronic forms taken by a particular language at a given point in its development...
eBook - ePub- James Simpson, James Simpson(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...(See Davies 1999 : chapter 1, and Cook 2005, for discussions.) With the widespread acceptance of Brumfit's formulation – the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems – the sanction for applied linguistics to develop its own models of description is now no longer contended. The central questions for theory therefore become, in Widdowson's words (1984: 22): ‘how can relevant models of language description be devised, and what are the factors which will determine their effectiveness?’ Part V presents descriptions of language for applied linguistics: in each case, authors discuss the concerns that might be addressed effectively with such models. It could be said that applied linguistics is in part defined by its approaches to the description of language: a field which is concerned with real-world decision-making characteristically makes use of empirically secured data and empirical research methods. Nonetheless, in an echo of earlier chapters, readers will note that no one description, model or view of language will suffice for all intentions: one's understanding of language will depend to an extent on one's particular concern of the time, and it is for readers to judge the relevance of these descriptions for their own purposes. As Widdowson notes (2003 : 14), applied lingu-sitcs ‘does not impose a way of thinking, but points things out that might be worth thinking about’. The section opens with three chapters of importance to language teaching and learning, and certainly with broad general relevance. Michael Swan presents an overview of Grammar in its ‘narrow sense’, that is, morphology and syntax. This chapter is followed by that on Lexis, by Joe Barcroft, Gretchen Sunderman and Norbert Schmitt, who describe this as the area of language study where form and meaning meet...
- David Hornsby(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...Linked to the latter is a concern with finding universals, i.e. features common to all languages rather than just to individual ones. Where the Port-Royal Grammars of the seventeenth century (see below) proposed universal linguistic categories on the basis of those found in the Classical languages, the North American Descriptivists of the twentieth century celebrated linguistic relativity, i.e. the view that each language conceptualizes the world in its own way. The pendulum was to swing back in favour of universalism with the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957 (see Chapter 8), heralding the emergence of the generative paradigm, which started from the belief that human beings are innately equipped to learn language, and that therefore at an underlying level all languages must be structurally similar. Key idea: Rationalists v. empiricists Rationalists linked language to innate mental structures, while empiricists denied the existence of these structures and saw language as moulded by sensory experience. A final important theme is that of linguistics as a science. The scientific model for linguistics has, however, varied over time, from comparisons to geology or natural history in the nineteenth century, with its focus on regularities in sound changes, to an emphasis on ‘mathematical’ descriptive rules in the twentieth. Part of the requirement for treating linguistics as a science, as we saw in Chapter 1, was that language be studied on its own terms: in Saussure’s words, ‘en elle-même et pour elle-même’ (in itself and for itself). However, it ultimately proved impossible to view language in isolation from other aspects of human life. Language variation, for example, cannot be divorced from social factors such as class or regional origin with which it correlates...
eBook - ePubAuthority in Language
Investigating Standard English
- James Milroy, Lesley Milroy(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...8 SOME PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF PRESCRIPTIVISM Educational issues and language assessment procedures 8.1 Introduction Throughout this book, we have considered linguistic prescriptivism from two perspectives. First, we have looked at popular and general notions of correctness in language in relation to known facts about linguistic structure and use. Second, practical questions have been discussed as they emerged, particularly questions of interest to educators. Generally, we have argued that objective and disinterested discussion of important practical issues connected with ‘correctness’ (such as the problems of non-standard speakers in the educational system) has been rare, with the result that language teaching and assessment procedures are often less e ffi cient than they might otherwise be. We now consider in a little more detail two practical matters related to language teaching and assessment, areas of activity where an objective and informed approach to the facts of language structure and language use would seem to be especially important. The fi rst is the extensive debate which has been particularly prominent in the British press over the last ten years on the nature of the English language curriculum. The second is the manner in which language tests are used to measure, for various purposes, the linguistic abilities of an individual. This latter discussion is not con fi ned to Britain, nor to educational contexts. 8.2 Press, politicians and the great grammar debate Like most other contemporary states, Britain has a majority of non-standard speakers in the school population. Even within such a relatively small area as the European Community, some governments have responded to the democratisation of education with more enthusiasm than others, as is evident from the widely di ff ering perspectives on education of non-standard dialect speakers described by Cheshire et al. (1989)...
eBook - ePubThe Languages of Literature
Some Linguistic Contributions to Criticism
- Roger Fowler(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Mr Sinclair’s own occasional lapses are a useful warning of the stratagems that have to be devised to preserve the purity of each of the two linguistic modes. Description is most remote from common speech in the special language of mathematics, and it is significant that Mr Sinclair’s five quasi-algebraic tables are entirely free from ordinary evaluative terms. A similar absence of description, in the non-evaluative sense which the word has in modern linguistics, characterizes lyric poetry, the mode which perhaps represents the ideal form of evaluative speech. The relationship, then, between description and evaluation may be thought of as consisting of two diverging modes of verbal communication, both of which originate, for society as for the individual, in the common area of everyday speech. No doubt, as we have seen in the case of Mr Sinclair’s essay, there will always be degrees of purity or impurity. Short of the total descriptive purity of higher mathematics come such disciplines as simple arithmetic (in which 13 may still persist as an unlucky number) ; short of la poésie pure are such genres as the novel which are clearly tainted with or qualified by an element of description. But—and this is the real point—the direction which the various modes of linguistic communication take cannot usually be mistaken. Descriptive linguistics is always at least headed towards total description—a detached, objective, universally available discipline (whatever the user’s age, sex, nationality, or culture). Literature, on the other hand, has its ineradicable subjective core, which tends to define the range and effectiveness of its uses. 2 The point of departure between the two specializations from the vulgar tongue can also be put in strictly linguistic terms. It is a matter either of breaking down the sentence into its separable parts —or else of taking the sentence as the unit and building up larger units as the sentences accumulate...
