Abstract
It is a truism that linguistics is ‘descriptive not prescriptive’ – concerned to describe the structure and use of natural languages, and not to make value-judgements on them. Verbal hygiene was the title of a book that prompted debate among sociolinguists, by challenging the view that value judgements are of no relevance for linguistics (Cameron, 1995). It argued that competent language users routinely make value judgements on language; ideas about what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in language are central to their understanding of it, and ought therefore to be of interest to linguists who study language use as a form of social behavior.
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