In defence of prescriptivism
If you’re a casual consumer of pop linguistics, you’ve probably heard the opinion that language change and drift is natural, and so you shouldn’t prescribe how people should speak or write correctly. Instead, it is said, be descriptivist, describing how the language evolves, rather than prescriptivists.
In the video In Defence of Prescriptivism,
K Klein gives a more nuanced perspective on the topic.
They make the point that there are many things that fall under the umbrella of
prescriptivism, and not all of them are bad.
Sure, some of them are bad, but not all of them, and we should keep that in mind.
I don’t agree with all of their points, but the video gave me a new perspective on the topic.
If that is a topic you’re interested in, I recommend giving it a watch.