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I hate the extremists at the descriptivist end of the spectrum. I have no desire to return to four hundred years ago where everyone spelled words as one pleased, and comprehension suffers for it.

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I'm skeptical that anyone wants to de-standardize spelling. Maybe its like the abortion debate. There isn't a pro-abortion side except in the minds of the "pro-life" people. Descriptivists by definition study/report how language is used rather than agitate for any changes so if such people do exist they would be a different kind of prescriptivist.

I think it's a common category error. The job of an academic linguist is mostly (as I understand it) to study language as-found, but I've met a few people who take that to mean "linguists -- the experts on language -- say we shouldn't try to 'correct' differences."

It comes in a few flavours. Sometimes an assumption that linguists as people are never prescriptive. Sometimes as an argument for the respectability of established dialect (not to say this conclusion is wrong, only the argument.)

There is plenty of (mostly non-professional IME) "normative descriptivism" floating around.

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