Prescriptive and Descriptive Approaches

Abstract

Prescriptivism and descriptivism are two different schools of thought concerned with language usage and propelled by historical and sociopolitical factors. Invasions of the British Isles throughout the medieval period produced numerous vernaculars which prevailed for centuries until the London dialect began to dominate in the 15th century. As British imperialistic interests grew, external influences increased concerns about language corruption and initiated the demand for a language reformation and standardization. Hence, prescriptivism gradually rose to prominence during the Enlightenment and language purism started to inform many English rule‐based grammars. However, growing nationalistic tendencies in America and the intellectual environment of the 19th century challenged prescriptivism and fostered the rise of descriptivism, which continued to grow in popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries largely due to new sociopolitical views in the teaching of grammar, style, and usage embodied in the English as a global language and the World Englishes phenomena. Further, developments in corpus linguistics have enabled the study and description of register‐specific grammars. Today, both schools have immediate pedagogical implications. While many teachers and linguists encourage the adoption of a descriptive approach in the language classroom, this is accompanied by practical considerations such as which particular English variety to teach.