By: Rex Harrison

Rex Harrison — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:57:49 +0000

I would agree that what you do is normative in spirit according to the definition you give. But viewing language in those kind of instrumental terms is often complicated. It is true that the aim of editing is to hold yr writers up to a standard that is best for achieving their goals. And that in translation you are doing the same thing – a Catalan letter isn’t going to be the optimal way to communicate with a potential US employer. But the problem with being normative in that sense about writing is that it is hard to define what the goal of the texts you are dealing with is, and hence what standard you are to hold it up to to best achieve those goals. If the goal is simply to communicate some propositions about the world then a lot of the corrections you will make will have little or no impact (can using “which” instead of “that” cause a breakdown in communication?).

Of course the goal of most communication is not that simple. You are also trying to communicate something about the writer, their educational level, their position in society etc. At some level an important part of what you are trying to communicate is that they know the conventions of the language they are writing in. A large part of this means helping them to follow others’ prescriptive rules. It is true that you are helping the writer to follow prescriptive rules because they are widely accepted and it is in their best interests to do so and that in that sense you are more like a policeman or a parole officer than a judge. But I wonder whether that is really so very different from the role of the traditional grammatical prescriptivist.

Comments on: Label Me This: Prescriptivism Revisited

By: Rex Harrison