Commenting on the Manifesto, alienvoord opines that:

...I think this "complete descriptivist rejection of grammatical rules in the face of contrary usage" you mention is a straw man. A real descriptive grammar is a description of usage, including what is used and not used in various social contexts. In other words, I think the descriptive approach is the third way.

So why don't I call myself a descriptivist?

I'll readily agree that the definition of descriptivism that I used is a straw man, and that few people are actually descriptivists in this "anything, anything you say goes" sense. This sense of descriptivism is used primarily by the people we call prescriptivists, for whom it functions rhetorically as the more troubling half of a good-crazy dichotomy.

I suspect that the specifics of reactive grammar might qualify it as a mere faction of the sort of descriptivism alienvoord is describing — but whether you call your third way descriptivism or you call it reactive grammar, it's clear that people like us aren't actually included in the prescriptivist framework.

It's not at all crazy to want descriptivism to match up with what opponents of prescriptivism actually believe. In certain contexts (e.g. linguistics departments, where it's a premise, not a stance), it's already the natural word to use, and not every prescriptivist uses the straw man definition.

However, within the grammatico-political discourse you might have to fight to redefine/reclaim the term. Descriptivism, real descriptivism, may be the third way, but it's still going to sound like the second.

When the snoots come, descriptivist is a liability.

(Isn't that clause chilling? "When the snoots come...")

So I prefer to leave the biased prescriptivism/descriptivism framework intact and say "I'm not either of those." Other people might not be so ready to abandon the good ship Descriptivism, and you can rest assured that they are fighting the good fight o'er larboard.

Labels: grammar politics