In the US, it seems that the Right is associated with bad or incorrect language use. The Left, on the other hand, seems to be associated with prescribing language. According to Chapman (2012), in...Show moreIn the US, it seems that the Right is associated with bad or incorrect language use. The Left, on the other hand, seems to be associated with prescribing language. According to Chapman (2012), in the UK, Conservatives are often associated with prescriptivism because they are “bound up with issues of tradition and control” (p. 128). After creating a corpus of American and British English Facebook comments, I analysed the comments written by people who are anti-Trump, pro-Trump, anti-Brexit and pro-Brexit and found that overall the pro-Brexit and Trump group are more inclined to make linguistic mistakes and use non-standard English, whereas the anti-Trump and Brexit group is more likely to write prescriptive comments.Show less
The twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or...Show moreThe twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or is not permissible within Standard English. Using comments posted below-the-line (BTL) by members of the public, in response to a regular column on language use in The Times titled “The Pedant”, written by Oliver Kamm, this thesis examines grassroots prescriptive attitudes – defined as attitudes held by non-linguists towards language correctness – towards prescriptive ideologies and a specific usage problem: less with countable nouns. This thesis concludes that a small majority of BTL posters hold well-documented grassroots prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness.Show less