Caricaturing Descriptive Grammarians

By Geoffrey Pullum. Professor Stefan Collini of the University of Cambridge says in a recent review article in Prospect Magazine:
For some time now, it has been customary to label those who write about grammar and usage as either prescriptivists or descriptivists. The former think there are “right” and “wrong” ways to say or write, while the latter claim that we can only record how people actually use language, since any widespread successful usage is, ipso facto, “right.”
He is right that this inept caricature has been familiar for decades: It’s the dichotomy that I discussed in 2005 under the heading “Everything is correct” versus “nothing is relevant”; it is identical with E.B. White’s distinction between “the modern liberal of the English Department, the anything-goes fellow” and people who hold his (White’s) views about how to write. But it is flaming nonsense. More...