simply distinguish vernacular from written English. She treats historical enregisterment to show that prescribing a standard form also reifies the nonstandard form – that by stigmatizing certain constructions of nonstandard language, prescriptive approaches are describing and defining those features. Through her study, Anderwald shows that not all grammarians are prescriptive all the time. Quite often they show a fairly keen sensitivity to language change and end up describing the language as much as they prescribe forms.
Viktorija Kostadinova uses similar quantitative methods to evaluate the effects of prescriptivism on language use. Her conclusions confirm the trends we are seeing in other studies: there is hardly any long-term influence, although there can be a little short-term influence from prescriptive rules. While Kostadinova focuses on the split infinitive as a case study, her larger contribution comes from providing methods that could be used for any usage item. She combines prescriptive advice as one factor among many that could account for variation in the split infinitive and uses multifactorial analysis to measure its influence. Another method she adds is examining the co-occurrence of the split infinitive with other proscribed variants: the question is not just whether split infinitives increase or decrease in writing over time, but whether they mainly co-occur with other proscribed forms, particularly those characteristic of vernacular language.
Anderwald’s and Kostadinova’s similar approaches and methods have led them to a similar follow-up research question: How do prescriptive rules relate to vernacular language? This theme was not primary to their papers, but it is central to this volume. One of the values that the rules seem to encapsulate is a prejudice against the vernacular. As noted, the realization that the rules vary on the kind of English they are promoting disrupts the binary of correct vs incorrect and even standard vs nonstandard.
In Chapter 7, Marten van der Meulen examines values encoded in the Dutch national identity by looking at the epithets that codifiers use to disapprove of proscribed variants. Van der Meulen discusses the changing values in prescriptivism in the Netherlands during the 20th century, showing that justifications for prescriptive rules reflect underlying values. The rules that prescriptivists focus on and the justifications they use manifest the values of the prescriptivists. In this analysis, it appears that the Dutch tradition is similar in many ways to the English tradition, suggesting that the same forces that motivate correctness in the English tradition are present in other language traditions. However, Dutch approaches to prescriptivism and linguistic purity are also highly influenced by their connection to the trends toward and pushback against nationalism in Western Europe after World War II. By examining the epithets used in the Dutch practice of prescriptivism, van der Meulen makes explicit the assumptions about language made by critics, which assumptions reveal the values of the critics.
In the final chapter in this section, Loreta Vaicekauskienë examines the societal values filtered through educational policy in Lithuania. Vaicekauskienë shows how the Lithuanian government sees language purism as an important value, not least because Lithuania has been subjugated to imperial language policy in the past. Through education and propaganda, the Lithuanian language is used to foster a national identity. This chapter offers another disruption of the binary, but from the other direction – trained linguists, who are traditionally descriptivists, have been co-opted as prescriptivists. This chapter subverts the binary between prescriptivist and descriptivist because Vaicekauskienë shows that many linguists are willing to use their skills completely in service to a prescriptivist enterprise that underscores national (or at least governmental) values. In another twist, prescriptivist regulation is not primarily designed to exclude the less powerful, but to defend against empire; one of its chief motivations is to recover the national identity after decades of Russian oppression, both politically and linguistically.
The second section of this volume adds complexity in both research methods and linguistic traditions that serves to re-examine the binary between linguistics and prescriptivism.
2.3 Part 3: Responding to Correctness: Personal Values and Identity
The third section of the volume shifts from exploring binaries on a disciplinary or societal level to exploring how linguistic prescriptivism shapes (and is shaped by) the personal values and identities of specific communities.
In Chapter 9, Carmen Ebner addresses the theoretical issues of values, identities and binaries directly, noting that besides regulating language, prescriptions serve the important function of demarcating identities, which often create binaries: ‘us’ vs ‘them’ or ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’. Ebner looks at British and American attitudes toward two prescriptive rules. Among the most important identities that these examples reinforce are vernacular vs written and British vs American. These examples reinforce some binaries (vernacular/written and British/American) while disrupting others, especially correct/incorrect. Prescriptivism isn’t monolithic and must acknowledge that the ‘right forms’ in one community can be contrasted with entirely different ‘right forms’ in other communities. But the ‘right forms’ serve as an important piece of identity maintenance within communities.
Alyssa Severin and Kate Burridge continue this theme of linguistic identity maintenance by looking at complaints about linguistic issues in the Australian tradition. Severin and Burridge argue that Australians have built a strong national identity based on the distrust of authority, yet there is plenty of evidence that they crave authoritative injunctions, particularly in language regulations. They examine Australian approaches to prescriptive language in contrast to the national values of independence and distrust of authority. In so doing, they also uncover many other identities that are reinforced by attitudes toward correctness, such as ‘old school’ vs ‘newer ways’ or ‘educated’ vs ‘permissive’. Through their empirical methods of examining complaints, Severin and Burridge are able to identify clearly the linguistic issues that the Australian public values.
The next two chapters take a novel approach to identity, examining the role of prescriptive attitudes in reflecting a religious identity (cf. Edwards, 2009: 100). Chapter 11 by Nola Stephens-Hecker links attitudes toward right and wrong language with Christian believers’ larger views of language diversity as being either a problem (curse) or a benefit (blessing). She further links the Christian injunction toward charity with attitudes toward linguistic diversity. In this formulation of how to treat language diversity, Stephens-Hecker confronts the richer notion of language that Joseph articulates in the first section of the volume. She finds that the links between attitudes toward diversity of languages and attitudes toward proscribed forms are present, but not very strong, thus disrupting the moral/reprehensible binary. People who see value in striving for obedience to God’s commandments are not necessarily inclined to see the same duty to observe prescriptive rules. However, for those who value authority (such as Christians who see the Bible as the ultimate authority on living), knowing and obeying rules can be a driving force of personal identity.
In Chapter 12, Kate Burridge examines the linguistic values of a different Christian community, namely the Anabaptists (Mennonites) of southern Ontario. While this traditional faith community might be expected to mirror the approaches of the Christians in Stephens-Hecker’s study, the binary didn’t work for this community because they simply saw no need to regulate diversity. A principal value for the Anabaptists is humility, so privileging one language or dialect or even linguistic variant over another would be contrary to that value. This chapter stands out in contrast to Joseph’s arguments – and assumptions that are common in many prescriptivism studies – that prescriptivism is inevitable. Rather, Burridge shows that it is possible for a community to be aware of language variation without being evaluative or critical of that variation. The Anabaptist’s attitudes and statements about language connect with the values of the individuals within the community – just as we see in the English, Americans, Australians and Christians in the other chapters in this section.
The connection of values to individual and societal identities and linguistic prescriptivism provides another complication to an investigation of the binaries: the binaries are present, not because they are oversimplifications of complicated ideas, but because
