Introduction

In antiquity, grammatikê tekhnê meant ‘the art of writing’. Grammar had nothing to do with vernacular speech, which was disorderly and lacking both permanence and supraregional unity. The idea that writing and speech should be closely related only gained ground in early Renaissance Europe, starting in Italy where Dante ([1303–1305] 1996) put forth an argument for the beauty and nobility of the vernacular. The debate which his treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia instigated and to which his magnum opus, Divina Commedia (ca. 1308–1320), written, unlike the treatise, in Italian, lent substance, went on for centuries, during which the reading public grew and the desire to facilitate access to the written language became more pronounced. In a long process of vernacularisation, the monopoly of writing was wrested from the classical languages, while common speech began to be regulated and reduced to fixed rules.

Writing and Prescriptivism

It is pointing out the obvious that the notion of laying down rules for language is entirely reliant on writing. Not that etymology is always a good guide to meaning, but in the event ‘prescribe’ is a telling expression: both the object and the instrument of prescribing are written language, which, by virtue of the visual medium, suggests permanence and requires orderliness. Prescription is about guidance for writers, as are the rules of grammar in general. Modern linguistics led by the Young Grammarians and Saussure’s phonocentrism radically changed this perception, insisting that local varieties and unwritten languages, too, be recognised as systems of great complexity rather than being ‘without rules of grammar’. Yet, the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive grammar still has no firm place in the public mind, and the folk notion of the standard language as invariant and immutable persists. This language is, of course, the language of writing as taught at school, where children are imparted the rules they must obey. Writing, as Olson (1996) argued, rather than being its visual image becomes a model.