Introduction

What is ‘proper’ English? What English should we teach? Who decides? This unit addresses these questions.

Tasks

What is the rule?

Imagine a student of English asks you the following. How would you respond?

• a How do you greet someone when you are first introduced?

• b How do you answer the phone in English?

• c What is the correct spelling: specialise or specialize?

• d Which is preferable? Handicapped or disabled? Or neither?

• e Is I’m lovin’ it! wrong?

• f Like I said or As I said?

• g Is it different from or different than?

• h What’s the best way to sign off an email? Best regards? Best? Or …?

• i Is it me and my husband were there or my husband and I …? And between you and me or between you and I?

• j Should you pronounce the ‘t’ in often?

Consult with colleagues. Where do the answers come from – something you read in a book or on the internet, something a teacher taught you, or simply a hunch?

2 Prescriptive vs. descriptive rules

Here is a prescriptive rule that relates to example 1 (f) above.

Colloquial English admits like as a conjunction, and would not be shocked at such a sentence as ‘Nothing succeeds like success does’. In America they go even further, and say ‘It looked like he was going to succeed’. But in English prose neither of these will do. Like must not be treated as a conjunction. So we may say ‘Nothing succeeds like success’; but it must be ‘Nothing succeeds as success does’ and ‘it looks as if he were going to succeed’.

(Gowers 1973)

The rule is prescriptive because it tells you what you should say, indeed, what you must say, but not what people actually do say. Here is how a more recent grammar treats the same topic:

The conjunctions as and like have the same meaning when used in comparisons. Like is a little more informal.

Nobody understands him as I do.

Nobody understands him like I do.

(Carter et al. 2011)

This rule does not prescribe what should or must be done. It simply describes what is done. It is the kind of rule you would expect in a descriptive grammar.