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The Prescriptivist Discourse

"Language has immutable rules to be followed. It must be used as it should." Prescriptivists insist on informing the insecure public of how to speak and write correctly and judiciously. The correctness issue and a binary, either right or wrong, perspective on forms and meaning lie at the centre of the prescriptivist argument. In addition, a strong relationship between languge and thought is posited to the extent that grammar is claimed to organize the mind, while correct language is presumed to be the overt expression of correct thinking. Prescriptivism plays a pivotal role in the maintenance of the standard language by rejecting variation and change. This paper argues that Robert Lowth and Isabela Nedelcu, two scholars belonging to centuries and cultures very much apart, contribute to the same prescriptivist discourse community, as they are shown to support the same ideology. The two share fundamentally the same prescriptivist ideas, attitudes and arguments....Read more