a joke about two pere ubuists

[Malignd]

Abdiel:

<<Prescriptive grammarians usually consider the
dialect used by politicians, business leaders, the
upper socioeconomic class, the dialect used for
literature and printed documents, the dialect taught
in schools and used in courts, and propagated by the
mass media, as the "correct" form of language. These
so-called "language purists" have no support for their
claim other than political one. Standard American
English is an ideal. >>

I won't quote him here, but I largely agree with David
Morris's response regarding the value of the attempt
to prescribe, even if ultimately impossible.

It is certainly true that the plastic nature of
language outruns attempts finally to prescribe its
use.  Noah Webster (e.g.) believed his first American
English dictionary could corral American English,
given the isolation of the country at the time; the
dictionary was in many ways obsolete upon publication.
 Nevertheless, the attempt to prescribe--to
approximate and enforce a standard--has far greater
support in reason than a merely political one.  At the
most basic level, precision and complexity in thought
requires precision in language if it is to be
communicated as intended.  This basic truth is
needlessly complicated, if not made impossible, if
rules are flaunted as arbitrary and political.  Paul
Mackin referred to the controversy surrounding the
replacement of the prescriptive second edition of
Webster's with the descriptive third.  The second
remained the source of record for many years for many
institutions, Harvard Law School's style book, one
citable example.  It's not a matter of politics
(although politics has certainly entered the matter),
but one of agreed-upon standards for the sake of
advancing and intelligibly exchanging thought.

Cyrus:

<<Rules are but a tool by which to examine how
language works.>>

This is false but, even were it true, it would yet be
a good reason to maintain rules.



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