Descriptive grammarians distort living language by dissecting it into artificial parts.
Evidence
A grammarian is not a kind of scientist studying the actual structure of language; he is a kind of butcher, converting it from organic tissue into marketable and edible joints. Language as it lives and grows no more consists of verbs, nouns, and so forth than animals as they live and grow consist of forehands, gammons, rump-steaks, and other joints. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 443
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes both Wittgenstein’s ordinary-language philosophy and the philosophical debate about ‘descriptive’ versus ‘prescriptive’ grammar; also reminiscent of Hayek’s critique of rational constructivism. — connects to: Language can distort as well as transmit human culture; Treating language as a self-running nature reduces humans to pilots of inert forces. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1217; Language itself has become a site where reified theory falsifies lived experience — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1100 (+1 more)