Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

Prescriptivism
Prescriptivism is comparing one variety/ way of speaking a particular language against another. It could imply the view that some forms of speech/ language are incorrect, improper, lacking in communicative effect or have a low aesthetic value.
These practices could address certain aspect of how language is used, for example; spelling, grammar, pronunciation or syntax. It may also include judgements on which are socially proper and/or politically correct.
Its aims can be to establish a standard language/ teach what a particular society thinks is correct language or to advise on effective communication. Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with the alternative approach of descriptive linguistics.

Leading figures in Prescriptivism:

·         Guy Deutscher

·         Peter Trudgill

·         Jean Paul

·         Lynn Truss

·         James Cochrane

·         Jacob Grimm

·         Sir William Jones

Descriptivism
However descriptive linguistics concerns analysing and describing how language is spoken/ how it was spoken in the past by the group of people in a speech community. All of the research based in linguistics is descriptive and its aim is to observe the linguistic ‘world’ as it is, unbiased from preconceived ideas about how it should be, modern descriptive linguistics are based on a structural approach to language and are often contrasted to prescriptive linguistics.

Leading figures in Descriptivism:

·         James Milroy

·         Jean Aitcheson

·         Ray Harlow

Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism
Prescription and Description are complementary but each have different priorities and are therefore seen to be in conflict at times.

Conclusion

SO in simpler terms; prescriptivism is being perfectly happy to stick to the grammar rules that we have been using throughout and descriptivism is being alright to change or adapt your grammar to modern speech. One is relatively formal and the other is quite informal. 

BBC Voices

Aims
The poll created by the BBC was to find out how people feel about the accents and languages/dialects from all across the British Isles as well as to find out which accent was considered the most pleasant to listen to.

Methodology
The poll was commissioned by the BBC and conducted by Greenfield Online. The survey took place between the 17th and 26th of November 2004 and comprised of 5,010 people with a ratio of 49:51(men:women) so clearly more women took part in this than men. Most of those who took part were classed as 'middle aged' with the elderly and the 15-24s being considerably under-represented and additionally no social class data was collected in regards to the participants and maximum quotas for each area were used so that there was a wide geographical spread within the survey, though some panel weakness in areas such as Northern Ireland meant that a few of the regional samples were lower than others within the survey.

Findings
75% of the people of the UK believe that they hear more accents in everyday life as well as on the BBC radio/television and 78% of the population enjoy hearing the range of different accents.
Generally there was a close link found between pleasantness and prestige, for example the Edinburgh accent scored highly on both points whist Liverpool, Birmingham and Asian accents were deemed unpleasant to hear and that those who had one of those accents were lacking in social status.
However 2 accents broke the mould for this survey- with the London accent being highly valued for its prestige but not being very pleasant to listen to and the Newcastle accent, whilst sounding pleasant to hear was not very prestigious sounding.
Scottish and Irish voters seemed to like the Scottish accent more than anything, whilst Welsh and English voted for Standard English as the top.

Analysis & Evaluation
An analysis of this is that accents that are more rhotic and that contain more closed vowel sounds are thought of as more pleasant to the ear as well as well as fairly highly regarded in terms of prestige- which can help when job hunting. Accents which have sharper sounds to them with more open vowels are deemed less pleasant to hear, such as the Liverpudlian and 'Brummy' accents which tend to grate on peoples ears more often, as well as being seen as rather common (lower class) when it comes to prestige and more unlikely to earn you a job.

Conclusion
It is clear that from this survey in 2004 that the people of the UK prefer the more standard English accents, such as Home Counties or Received Pronunciation  and believe that it will help in terms of how prestigious it may sound, however having a Scottish or Newcastle accent will help in terms of friendliness.