64 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
toandThis is the lady to whom I was talkingco-exist. Prescriptive
writers favour the latter and condemn the former (‘Never end a
sentence with a preposition’). Descriptive writers point out that
both usages are widespread, traditional (used in English since the
Middle Ages), and important, for they allow people to make a
difference in the formality of their expression: the former is more
colloquialthanthelatter.Tocondemnoneversionas‘badgrammar’
is to deny English users the stylistic option of switching styles,
when it is appropriate to do so, and thus reduces the versatility and
richness of the language.
Descriptivists do not like the narrow-minded intolerance and
misinformed purism of prescriptivists. Prescriptivists, correspond-
ingly, do not like the all-inclusiveness and egalitarian philosophy
of descriptivists, which they interpret as a lack of responsibility to-
wards what is best in a language. The controversy shows no sign
of going away, even after 250 years, with the arguments being re-
cycled by each generation, and refuelled by new developments in
society, such as broadcasting and, now, the Internet. What is of in-
terest, in the burgeoning Internet literature, is to see the way writ-
ers are struggling to maintain a bent which is naturally descriptive
and egalitarian in character while recognizing a prescriptive urge
to impose regularity and consistency on a world which otherwise
might spiral out of control. The situation is very reminiscent of
the one Samuel Johnson encountered when he began work on his
Dictionary:^3
When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our
speech copious without order, and energetick without rules;
wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be
disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be
made out of boundless variety, without any established principle
of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without a settled
test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received,
without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation or
acknowledged authority.(^3) The two Johnson quotations are from his Preface to ADictionary of the English language
(1755).