Section 2.1 Two Approaches to Grammar
In the previous chapter, we introduced the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar. This distinction is so fundamental to the study of language that it deserves a chapter of its own. Understanding the difference between these two approaches will help you think more clearly about language, evaluate grammatical advice more critically, and make better choices in your own writing.
Descriptive Grammar: How Language Actually Works.
Descriptive grammar aims to describe language as it is actually used by speakers. Descriptive linguists observe, document, and analyze the patterns that speakers produce—without making judgments about whether those patterns are "correct" or "incorrect." The goal is to understand the mental rules that speakers have internalized, rules that allow them to produce and understand sentences they’ve never heard before.
Descriptive rules are patterns that native speakers follow unconsciously. You don’t need to be taught these rules; you acquire them naturally by being exposed to language. By the time you started school, you had already mastered thousands of descriptive rules—rules so deeply ingrained that you couldn’t violate them if you tried.
Examples of descriptive rules:
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Word order determines meaning. In English, The dog bit the man means something entirely different from The man bit the dog. No one teaches children this rule explicitly; they figure it out from exposure. And no native speaker ever gets it wrong.
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Adjectives precede nouns (in most cases). We say the red house, not
the house red. We say a beautiful sunset, nota sunset beautiful. This pattern is so automatic that native speakers don’t even realize they’re following a rule. -
Question formation requires auxiliary movement. To turn She can swim into a question, we move can to the front: Can she swim? If there’s no auxiliary, we add do: She swims becomes Does she swim? Native speakers produce these patterns effortlessly, even though few could articulate the rule.
The key characteristic of descriptive rules is that violating them produces gibberish—sequences that aren’t recognizable as English at all. “Store the to went him and me” isn’t a sentence any English speaker would produce or understand. It violates the descriptive rules of English word order.
Prescriptive Grammar: How Someone Says Language Should Be Used.
Prescriptive grammar sets forth rules about how language should be used. These rules are explicitly taught—in schools, in style guides, in writing handbooks—and they represent the preferences of particular groups or authorities. Prescriptive rules are typically framed as "should" or "should not" statements: “Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.” “Never split an infinitive.” “Use whom, not who, as an object.”
Unlike descriptive rules, prescriptive rules must be consciously learned. You weren’t born knowing that split infinitives are supposedly wrong; someone had to tell you. And unlike descriptive rules, violating prescriptive rules produces comprehensible English—English that might be judged negatively in certain contexts, but English nonetheless.
Examples of prescriptive rules:
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Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. According to this rule, What are you looking at? should be At what are you looking? But the first version is natural English that everyone understands; the second sounds stilted and awkward.
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Use whom as the object of a verb or preposition. According to this rule, Who did you see? should be Whom did you see? But in casual speech, most English speakers use who in both positions without confusion.
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Avoid double negatives. According to this rule, I don’t know nothing is incorrect because two negatives make a positive. But speakers who use double negatives intend emphasis, not logical confusion—and everyone understands them perfectly.
A Quick Test.
Here’s a useful way to distinguish the two types of rules: if a rule can be violated while still producing comprehensible English, it’s probably prescriptive. If violating the rule produces gibberish, it’s descriptive.
Compare:
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Me and him went to the store (violates prescriptive rule but perfectly comprehensible)
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Store the to went him and me(violates descriptive word-order rules and is incomprehensible)
The first sentence might earn you a correction from your English teacher, but no one would fail to understand it. The second sentence isn’t English at all—it violates the fundamental patterns that make English English.
Why the Distinction Matters.
Understanding this distinction matters because many people confuse the two types of rules. They treat prescriptive preferences as if they were descriptive facts—as if ending a sentence with a preposition somehow violated the nature of English rather than the preferences of certain authorities.
This confusion has real consequences. Students are told their language is "wrong" when it’s actually just different from what a style guide prefers. Speakers of non-standard dialects are judged as unintelligent when they’re following perfectly systematic rules—just not the prestige variety’s rules. And writers become anxious about "mistakes" that aren’t mistakes at all, just choices that particular authorities happen to disprefer.
