User-centred grammar

By Gordon Rugg

Within linguistics, the scientific study of language, there is a long-established and useful distinction between two approaches to grammar, namely prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar. This article describes a third approach, namely user-centred grammar. Before describing this third approach, I’ll briefly summarise the other two.

Background

Prescriptive grammar typically takes the view that there is a “correct” form of grammar for a dialect or language that should be followed by everyone, including people for whom that dialect or language is their native tongue. An example from Standard English is the claim that one should say “It is I” as opposed to “It is me”. Similarly, prescriptive grammar often makes normative claims about correctness based on claims that a particular phrasing is in some sense logically correct. An example in English is how to treat two negatives (e.g. “I haven’t got nothing”). Prescriptive grammar typically claims that these should cancel each other out because that is “logical” by analogy with formal logic.

Descriptive grammar describes the grammar used by native speakers of a dialect or language, without any normative claims. For the first example above, the descriptive approach would say that some native speakers of Standard English say “It is I” but that most native speakers of English say “It is me”. For the second example above, descriptive grammar typically states that in various dialects of English, the two negatives are treated as reinforcing each other.

Historically, prescriptive grammar has tended to invoke semi-arbitrary norms based on the grammar of other languages that have high status. In the case of Standard English, for example, prescriptive grammar frequently invoked norms from Latin (“we should use this phrasing in English because that’s what Latin would do”).

The use of descriptive grammar in linguistics has numerous advantages in terms of internal consistency, of avoiding imposition of arbitrary and semi-arbitrary norms on native speakers of a language, and of avoiding the social stigmatisation of dialects and languages other than the most prestigious ones. However, there are situations where phrasings can make a significant difference in how well a person can communicate their intended message to others. This causes problems for anyone attempting to teach ways of avoiding unintended consequences from particular phrasings, because this can look like an attempt to impose subjective norms.

The approach described in this article, namely user-centred grammar, provides a possible way of resolving this apparent paradox.