Prescriptivists

• Jonathan Swift


  • Appalled at the state of English
  • Wrote Gulliver’s travels and wrote how spoken + written English is riddled with ’abuses’ and ‘absurdities’
  • Wanted an academy to set a permanent standard for grammar (e.g. academie francaise)
• Robert Lowth


  • grounded his grammar rules in Latin
  • Believed Latin = golden standard + any move away from this was ‘decay’ of the English language
  • Wrote ‘A short introduction to the English grammar with critical notes’ - was so successful, reissued 45 times in 38 years