descriptivism
- noun
- /dɪˈskrɪptɪvɪzəm/
- Specialized
:
descriptivismo
- The shift toward descriptivism in linguistics has changed the way educators approach language teaching in schools.
Examples
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Descriptivism encourages linguists to observe and record how people actually speak and write, rather than dictating strict rules.
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Many modern linguists advocate for descriptivism, arguing that it reflects the reality of language as it evolves over time.
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In the field of African Studies, then dominated by descriptivism and artisanship, Body of Power was one of the few studies to engage so explicitly and so boldly with several key concerns of the social theory of the time: the matter of form, questions of historical agency, the connection of context, intentionality, and what today we would call subjectivity but which, in those days, had another name: consciousness or even ideology.
Academic text (2010)
Synonyms
The study of how people actually use a language at a particular time without judging it
Antonyms
How Prescriptive
- Specialized
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
descriptivism = descriptive (semi-transparent) = describe + ive + ism
The word is built regularly from 'describe' + '-ive' + '-ism', but the linguistic doctrine sense is specialized rather than fully predictable from the parts.
Etymology
Descriptivism comes from the common word describe, built from old parts de- 'down' and scribere 'to write', so it originally meant 'to write down' or 'say how something is'. So in language study descriptivism is the simple idea of describing how people actually speak or write, not telling them how they should.
