Talk:Linguistic descriptivism

It is fascinating to see the authors of this article going through hoops to avoid being called prescriptivist while at the same time defending the elements of prescription in their thinking. To pretend that description can classify some things as incorrect and that prescription only begins when the wrong things are classified as incorrect is just silly. That's a way of keeping the word "prescriptivist" as a stick with which to beat people who prescribe in ways you don't like, but still claiming the right to prescribe yourself. Let's come clean: all mainstream commentators on language issues have elements of both description and prescription in their thinking. If there are "pure descriptivists" or "pure prescriptivists" out there, then they are fringe groups that I have never encountered. The reality is that we all try to balance these two things. Both prescription and description are positive, necessary forces in our metalinguistic awareness, but the dynamic tension between them can be very complex. Let's stop running away from this complexity. --Doric Loon 08:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)