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Calling for a truce in the descriptivist-prescriptivist wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2003

Bryan A. Garner
Bryan A. Garner
Affiliation:
U.S.A.
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Extract

A reply to Tom McArthur, ‘Error, Editing, and World Standard English’, ET65 (Jan 01)

When modern linguists focus exclusively on speech, they're overreacting to their predecessors' preoccupation with writing. Descriptivists have a bias toward studying speech; prescriptivists have a bias toward studying writing. Both are important. Speaking precedes writing. It's the essence of language. Yet writing is a form of language worth studying in its own right. For some reason, though, many linguists refuse to recognize this.

Type
Original Articles
Information
English Today , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2001 , pp. 5 - 9
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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