Linguistic prescription is the establishment of rules defining publicly preferred usage of language, including rules of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language, teach what a particular society or sector of a society perceives as a correct or proper form, or advise on effective and stylistically apt communication. If usage preferences are conservative, prescription might appear resistant to language change; if radical, it may produce neologisms. Such prescriptions may be motivated by consistency (making a language simpler or more logical); rhetorical effectiveness; tradition; aesthetics or personal preferences; linguistic purism or nationalism (i.e. removing foreign influences); or to avoid causing offense (etiquette or political correctness).
Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with the descriptive approach of academic linguistics, which observes and records how language is actually used (while avoiding passing judgment). entry for "Descriptivism and prescriptivism" quotation: "Contrasting terms in linguistics." The basis of linguistic research is text (corpus) analysis and field study, both of which are descriptive activities. Description may also include researchers' observations of their own language usage. In the Eastern European linguistic tradition, the discipline dealing with standard language cultivation and prescription is known as "language culture" or "speech culture".
Despite being apparent opposites, prescriptive and descriptive approaches have a certain degree of conceptual overlap as comprehensive descriptive accounts must take into account and record existing speaker preferences, and a prior understanding of how language is actually used is necessary for prescription to be effective. Since the mid-20th century some historically prescriptive works - even including style guides, which are prescriptive works by nature - have increasingly integrated descriptive material and approaches. Examples of guides updated to add more descriptive material include Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) and the third edition Garner's Modern English Usage (2009) in English, or the Nouveau Petit Robert (1993) in French. A partially descriptive approach can be especially useful when approaching topics of ongoing conflict between authorities, or in different dialects, disciplines, styles, or registers. Other guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style, are designed to impose a single style and thus remain primarily prescriptive ().
Some authors define "prescriptivism" as the concept where a certain language variety is promoted as linguistically superior to others, thus recognizing the standard language ideology as a constitutive element of prescriptivism or even identifying prescriptivism with this system of views. Others, however, use this term in relation to any attempts to recommend or mandate a particular way of language usage (in a specific context or register), without, however, implying that these practices must involve propagating the standard language ideology. According to another understanding, the prescriptive attitude is an approach to norm-formulating and codification that involves imposing arbitrary rulings upon a speech community, as opposed to more liberal approaches that draw heavily from descriptive surveys; in a wider sense, however, the latter also constitute a form of prescriptivism.
Mate Kapović makes a distinction between "prescription" and "prescriptivism", defining the former as "a process of codification of a certain variety of language for some sort of official use", and the latter as "an unscientific tendency to mystify linguistic prescription".
Aims Linguistic prescription is a part of a language standardization process. The chief aim of linguistic prescription is to specify socially preferred language forms (either generally, as in Standard English, or in style and register) in a way that is easily taught and learned. Prescription may apply to most aspects of language, including spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
Prescription is useful for facilitating inter-regional communication, allowing speakers of divergent dialects to understand a standardized idiom used in broadcasting, for example, more readily than each other's dialects. While such a lingua franca may evolve by itself, the tendency to formally codify and normalize it is widespread in most parts of the world. Foreign language instruction is also considered a form of prescription, since it involves instructing learners how to speak, based on usage documentation laid down by others.
Linguistic prescription may also be used to advance a social or political ideology. Throughout history, prescription has been created around high-class language, and therefore it degeneralizes lower-class language. This has led to many justifications of classism, as the lower-class can easily be portrayed to be incoherent and improper if they do not speak the standard language. This also corresponds to the use of prescription for racism, as dialects spoken by what is seen as the superior race are usually standardized in countries with prominent racism. A good example of this is the demeaning of AAVE in the United States, as the idea that the "lower race" speaks improperly is propagated by people with an opposing ideology.
Authority
Prescription presupposes authorities whose judgments may come to be followed by many other speakers and writers. For English, these authorities tend to be books. H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage was widely taken as an authority for British English for much of the 20th century; Strunk and White's The Elements of Style has done similarly for American English. The Duden grammar (first edition 1880) has a similar status for German.
Dictionaries Although lexicographers often see their work as purely descriptive, dictionaries are widely regarded as prescriptive authorities. They are invoked in everyday conversations and word-based game shows as authorities on how words are supposed to be used, and speakers frequently appeal to earlier senses or etymologies of words to argue for what a word "really" means. Bourdieu characterises dictionaries as providing a "normalized" language.
In practice, however, major dictionaries tend to operate descriptively. Both Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) regularly publish new entries or update existing definitions based on observed usage, adding a word once its frequency passes a threshold rather than attempting to create or sanction new vocabulary. Both also contextualise definitions with real-life usage examples, with Merriam-Webster drawing on notably current sources. The OED's own description of itself as "the accepted authority on the English language" illustrates the tension: the phrase invites readers to treat the dictionary as prescriptive, even though the dictionary's methodology is largely descriptive.
Some dictionaries lower the degree of normalisation further by mapping regional variation. The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), for example, aims at "representing the full panoply of American regional vocabulary," cataloguing which senses are part of the shared norms of which communities rather than declaring a single standard.
Books such as Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003), which argues for stricter adherence to prescriptive punctuation rules, also seek to exert an influence.
Formal regulation
Linguistic prescription is imposed by regulation in some places. The French Academy in Paris is the national body in France whose recommendations about the French language are often followed in the French-speaking world (francophonie), though not legally enforceable. In Germany and the Netherlands, recent spelling and punctuation reforms, such as the German orthographic reform of 1996, were devised by teams of linguists commissioned by the respective governments and then implemented by statutes, some met with widespread dissent.
Examples of national prescriptive bodies and initiatives are: Afrikaans: The Taalkommissie (Language Commission) is responsible for the compilation of the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (Afrikaans Word-list and Spelling Rules), an orthography of formal, standardized Afrikaans. Albanian: The Social Sciences and Albanological Section of the Academy of Sciences of Albania for the Tosk variety of the Albanian standard language. Canadian French: The in the Canadian province of Québec, where French is perceived to be particularly threatened by the incursion of English. Dutch: In the Netherlands and the Flanders region of Belgium, standardized spelling norms are compulsory for government publications and in education (see Wordlist of the Dutch language). The Flemish press and other media also adhere to these rules. In the Netherlands, some media apply a slightly adapted spelling, as outlined in the White Booklet. French: The recommendations of the , a national body, are legally unenforceable, but they are often followed by standard French speakers. German: The German orthography reform of 1996 established statutory national normative spelling usages for each of the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Belgium). It has been disregarded by many people, and it became so controversial in the state of Schleswig-Holstein that in a plebiscite held there in 1998 56.4% of voters opposed its implementation. Notwithstanding, the Schleswig-Holstein parliament reversed the referendum outcome in 1999. Many major German newspapers chose to implement the reforms only partially (e.g. Axel Springer AG, Der Spiegel) or to reject it entirely, ending a period when combined German spelling, although officially only necessary in government and educational use, was the widespread de facto standard. Italian: The Accademia della Crusca, the Italian language academic body. Polish: The Polish Language Council for standard Polish, which aims to popularize Polish language knowledge, provide guidance on standard usage, as well as formulate the rules of orthography. The Polish prescriptive policy recognizes two subvarieties of standard Polish: the "model/official norm" () and the "colloquial/vernacular norm" (), with the former being a highly traditionalistic idiom for written language and public usage, and the latter being a more liberal idiom for private contexts that is more permissive for loanwords and deviations from "traditional" usage. The latter is also considered to include certain "educated" regional forms, known as regionalizmy. The term "standard Polish" is not much used in Poland; instead, the name polszczyzna ogólna ("General [Common] Polish") is preferred, with the codified standard dialect being prescribed as "correct Polish". Portuguese: The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 sets a standard orthography for the language, it has been made into law in both Brazil (2009) and Portugal (2008). Romanian: The Romanian Academy for standard Romanian, whose interpretations and instructions are approved by the Romanian state and other substances where Romanian is authoritatively recognized (e.g. the European Union and Vojvodina). In Moldova, the only country besides Romania where Romanian is the state language, it is monitored by the Institute of Linguistics of Academy of Sciences of Moldova.