<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> The paper proposes an empirical method to investigate linguistic prescriptions as inherent corrective behaviors. The behaviors in question may but need not necessarily be supported by any explicit knowledge of rules. It is possible to gain insight into them, for example by extracting information about corrections from revision histories of texts (or by analyzing speech corpora where users correct themselves or one another). One easily available source of such information is the revision history of Wikipedia. As is shown, the most frequent and short corrections are limited to linguistic errors such as typos (and editorial conventions adopted in Wikipedia). By perusing an automatically generated revision corpus, one gains insight into the prescriptive nature of language empirically. At the same time, the prescriptions offered are not reducible to descriptions of the most frequent linguistic use.</p></abstract>

The paper proposes an empirical method to investigate linguistic prescriptions as inherent corrective behaviors. The behaviors in question may but need not necessarily be supported by any explicit knowledge of rules. It is possible to gain insight into them, for example by extracting information about corrections from revision histories of texts (or by analyzing speech corpora where users correct themselves or one another). One easily available source of such information is the revision history of Wikipedia. As is shown, the most frequent and short corrections are limited to linguistic errors such as typos (and editorial conventions adopted in Wikipedia). By perusing an automatically generated revision corpus, one gains insight into the prescriptive nature of language empirically. At the same time, the prescriptions offered are not reducible to descriptions of the most frequent linguistic use.

On the Social Nature of Linguistic Prescriptions

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland

Psychology of Language and Communication

{"article-title":"On the Social Nature of Linguistic Prescriptions"}

The paper proposes an empirical method to investigate linguistic prescriptions as inherent corrective behaviors. The behaviors in question may but need not...

On the Social Nature of Linguistic Prescriptions

Published Online: Sep 06, 2013

Page range: 175 - 187

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2013-0011

Keywords
descriptivism, prescriptivism, normativity, corpora research, Wikipedia

This content is open access.

On the Social Nature of Linguistic Prescriptions

Published Online: Sep 06, 2013

Page range: 175 - 187

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2013-0011

Keywordsdescriptivism, prescriptivism, normativity, corpora research, Wikipedia

This content is open access.

Keywords
descriptivism, prescriptivism, normativity, corpora research, Wikipedia