Welcome to Episode 70 of Lexis. Raj and Dan talk to Dr Emma Humphries, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast about all things prescriptivism. 

We talk about:

• What prescriptivism is and how it can de defined

• Prescriptivism in French and English and the role of the Academy

• The Your Wrong project that Emma is working on

• Prescriptivism in popular culture and traditional guides, manuals and grammars

• Why prescriptivism and descriptivism are not locked in a war and why it’s more than a goodies vs baddies, left vs right binary

• The kinds of arguments prescriptivists put forward

• Why complaints about language are often - but not always - proxies for complaints about people

• How to convert a prescriptivist

• How to get involved in the Your Wrong project

Your Wrong website: https://yourwrong.co.uk/ 

Submit your examples: https://yourwrong.co.uk/submit 

Contact Emma: [email protected] 

Emma’s Queen’s University page: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/emma-humphries

Emma’s favourite book about language: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/language-myths-laurie-bauer/762943?ean=9780140260236 

Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social 

Contributors

Lisa Casey 

blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)

Dan Clayton 

blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social 

Jacky Glancey 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey

Raj Rana

Matthew Butler 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA 

Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys 

Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys