English Usage

Abstract

English usage as a focus for prescriptivism, and for linguistic research, has occupied different spheres of intellectual endeavor for centuries. This paper tracks their independent histories, as prescriptive writers present selected elements of written English as correct usage (by their own or other authority); and descriptive grammarians embrace variation in usage, drawing on language evidence from different contexts of use. The two approaches can now be juxtaposed using data from synchronic and diachronic corpora, which allow descriptive linguists to test the force of prescriptive recommendations, and see how far they influence the directions of usage change. Four test cases are presented: the use of shall versus will, the mandative subjunctive, conjunctive like, and the selection of nominative or accusative pronouns with gerunds. In each case, corpus evidence before and after publication of the prescription shows that common usage is largely indifferent to it, in the shorter or longer run.

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