Prescription, description

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In linguistics, prescription codifies language use, while description only studies it.

Both will report rules to spelling, grammar and syntax, and both (but particularly prescription) may involve social and even political details.

Prescription / prescriptivism / prescriptionists are often associated with

• recommendations, enforcement,

• people thinking that most language speakers should really be paying more attention to correct use of a language.

• the occasional obsession of making a language more structural, more predictable

• people asserting things as they wish things could be, not as they are (or have been, depending on whether that aligns with their wishes or not)

• dislike of language change

• hypercorrection

• oversimplification of real use

Description is primarily associated with

• being perfectly happy describing whatever people are doing with a language - even nonsensical things that may reduce that particular fragment of clear expression.

See also:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription