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Donald Trump and the Return of Prescriptivism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am not sure what academic linguists think about Donald Trump’s unorthodox spellings and occasional bad grammar, but it is a frequent source of amusement to me that people who would in other circumstances incline to the more liberal descriptivist view are the quickest to deride Trump for the sort of mistakes their descriptivist instincts should have taught them aren’t mistakes at all. Twitter is rife with this form of insta-prescriptivism.
I doubt most of those who mock Trump know the distinction between "descriptivist" and "prescriptivist", or care. However, to defend Trump (by implication) by saying that his opponents object to characteristics that they didn't in other persons, seems both beside the point and pretty common these days.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely pretty common these days.
ReplyDelete