Speculative Grammarian Podcast

The Original English Movement; Announcement; From Volume CXLIX, Number 3, of Speculative Grammarian, July 2004 — For decades descriptive linguists and professional prescriptivists—technical writers, editors, and English teachers—have been at war. As most linguists know all too well, the prescriptivists say that descriptivism is at best a weak philosophy of usage, and at worst an invitation to grammatical chaos. However, too many prescriptivists maintain what is, to descriptivists, an illogical position: language should not change—or at least not until all the opponents of a particular change are long dead. (Read by Trey Jones.)