Augustinian Semiotics as a Solution to the Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism Debate

Do words mean things? Taking Christian Answers to the Linguistic Debate, Contra Betrand Russel

Jan 04, 2025

A couple notes to start off with,

In this writing I use the term “thing itself” similarly to Kant but not exactly the same.
As Christians we are familiar with the popular version of the Prescriptive vs Descriptive debate of hermeneutics and by that I mean the debate between what passages are describing events and what passages are telling us to do something. The Prescriptive vs Descriptive dichotomy in linguistics is slightly similar but a completely different subject, one has to do with actions the other with language and ideas so it may be best to leave any notions of that particular debate that is also labeled as “Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism” at the door.

The most intriguing discussions in linguistics today all seem to orient around how one perceives the world around them using language and what those perceptions mean. As a student informing myself more and more about each of these debates and tracing their histories I keep finding the one of the roots of this issue in a particular controversy, that of Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism.

The controversy over Prescriptive and Descriptive grammar according to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum) is “often explained by saying that prescriptivists want to tell you how you ought to speak and write, while descriptivists want to tell you how people actually do speak and write”. Most contemporary linguists believe that linguistics is by nature a descriptive discipline because it’s observing the way language is used by individuals and the grammatical usage of the language. I contend however language retains aspects of both prescriptivism and descriptivism. Language has prescriptive, logical and noetic uses yet language also has poetic, colloquial and romantic uses as well as phonology that are all descriptive on varying levels. In this article I will be using Bertrand Russel’s argument for the grammatical usage of descriptive language, as an interlocuter for the popular descriptive side of the argument.

Before I dive into the arguments I would like to clarify my own position. It is my belief that though linguistics may be practiced descriptively, and that language itself is often used descriptively, the essentials of linguistics are prescriptive. Now, what do I mean by this? I mean that language is based in and dependent upon logic. From a linguistic perspective whatever we are observing and seeing that appears descriptive is actually based in real logical functions in both grammar and epistemology with the exception being some aspects of phonetics. Poetic and colloquial usages of language are descriptive in that they may break grammatical rules and use words differently, but they are still only breaking these rules in order to communicate a deeper message or understanding which still follows not only principles of logic but also other grammatic rules in any given linguistic system; any underlying message can only be understood through the individual analyzing these rules and the words they interact with. In such a way they are also prescriptive because the rules and meta-structure itself are also communicating meaning, and most importantly the subjects that the language is communicating about also retain ontological properties that function as objective truths in the logic structure. As a Christian one must understand that words always have some relation to that which they represent, not in that there is a phonetic correlation, but in that symbols always adequately symbolize something. Saint Augustin summarizes this linguistic perspective quite well in De Doctrina Christiana 1.2 “No one uses words except as signs of something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs: those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else. Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is nothing at all. Every thing, however, is not also a sign.”

The first argument presented by Russel in the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy is an example using the different ways of describing an interaction with a person named Jones. The first way of talking about the occurrence is by simply stating “I met a man” the second way is stating, “I met Jones”, Russel contends that both are really in the end equivalent because the person who you are talking to has no idea who Jones is and by qualification, no actual man ever enters the statement.

I already have a few disagreements with Russel but importantly, it is in the last sentence that I disagree with Russel the most. If we truly believe that every sign is also a thing, then when we communicate using signs-in this case, the signifier [Jones]-the thing itself must have some serious resemblance to the sign. So, when I speak and say “I met [Jones]” aspects of the actual person Jones are being communicated regardless of the addressee’s knowledge of Jones and it’s for this reason that when the speaker says “I met [Jones]” the addressee assumes information about Jones; such as Jones being a human, when in actuality Jones may be a dog or a turtle. The Grammatical context in which the statement “I met Jones” is what gives us further information on the signifier. If I state “Sorry, I’m late, I had a meeting where I met [Jones]” then I know that Jones is a man, because it is impossible to schedule a meeting with non-humans, both parties have to be capable of advanced reasoning and communication to participate in the action. This sort of transformational grammar while a development of descriptive schools of thought, is truly neither a descriptive analysis of the subject nor a fully prescriptive one. In the case of the former, it still has specific grammatical rules and structure which imbues meaning to the signifier. In the case of the latter, while it maintains prescriptive structures, the signifier itself is not being used in any sort of prescriptive manner. Chibuzo Nwoko states in his paper on the subject “The obvious is to say that TGG has helped in advancing and modifying the earlier approaches to the study of grammar in terms of elaboration of functions and description of grammatical and sentence structures. For instance, it goes beyond the traditional categorization of a simple or kernel sentence into Noun Phrase (NP) and Verb Phrase (VP). That is S NP + VP. But it analyses further the constituents of these larger structures via parsing and tree diagram to make the description much clearer. TGG gives room for flexibility and creativity in language use…” so while the hypothetical sentence structure I gave is itself truly neither prescriptive nor descriptive, the deep structure is prescriptive in that the semantic functioning of the signifiers operates according to rules that are necessarily prescriptive to function. However, we have to acknowledge that this prescriptive deep structure can create descriptive language especially when we focus on the subject of any singular kernel be it NP or VP or what have you. Or for the linguistic layman; though “I met Jones” can have its syntax and context rearranged to convey alternative meanings the rules that govern the meaning structures themselves will always remain as a prescriptive system that the language orients itself around. It’s also worth reminding the reader here that whenever we are doing such changes to kernels we are never changing the thing itself, though I may change [Jones] linguistically, I can never change Jones; and this goes back to the fact that [Jones] always maintains a co-relational existence with the real Jones. In this relationship [Jones] is contingent upon Jones and all the attributes, properties, qualities and aspects of Jones, in their limited but seemingly indefinite perceptual realities are reliant upon being communicated by [Jones] but Jones itself is never contingent upon the signifier [Jones]. Both the signifier and the thing being signified can only diverge from each other to a certain extent before the signifier is no longer a signifier of the thing as it really is nor of its properties and categories; at which point, the thing as a thing that actually exists, should be signified another way because its attributes, properties and qualities still exist to be regarded in communication though they don’t need to be explicitly expressed. There’s not an existing word for everything because not all things need to have words for them nor can some things be adequately articulated, and not all properties of an subject require communication for the subject to be identified or categorized.

Russel does provide a counter example to the first part of my argument stating “This[that the signifier is descriptive] becomes obvious when the statement is false… ‘I met a unicorn’ or ‘I met a sea-serpent’ is a perfectly significant assertion, if we know what it would be to be a unicorn or a sea-serpent, i.e. what is the definition of these fabulous monsters.[Emphasis mine] Thus, it is only what we may call the concept that enters into the proposition. In the case of “unicorn,” for example, there is only the concept that enters into the proposition. In the case of “unicorn” for example, there is only the concept : there is not also, somewhere among the shades, something unreal which may be called “a unicorn.” Therefor since it is significant (though false) to say “I met a unicorn,” it is clear that this proposition, rightly analyzed does not contain a constituent “a unicorn,” though it does contain the concept ‘unicorn,’.”

Before I respond to Russel’s point here, I must point out that he begs the question in the emphasis, Russel is already assuming that descriptivism is true because he believes the definition of the thing cannot be truly known, for the sake of argumentation, that must be pointed out. Furthermore, Russel’s fallacy also assumes an extremely radical empiricism that requires an epistemological inability to synthesize, combine or correlate ideas. As for the rest of Russel’s argument, he makes other mistakes, the most significant being that he does not realize that concepts themselves are prescriptive. We all must have similarly prescriptive concepts of unicorn and its categories otherwise such a thing as “the concept of unicorn” wouldn’t even exist. Related to the previous point, is the fact that even concepts must have definitive rules, properties and associations(even when a priori) either extrinsically or intrinsically and in most cases both, in order for them to exist. The relations here between things and concepts and concepts and their ideas just further proves the intracontingent corelationships between ideas, concepts and things.

For important theological reasons I must stress that a thing is not two way contingent upon its concept nor its signifier. When it comes to things their contingency is upon God who is the end of the causal chain, He defines what the objective actual realities of what a thing in and of itself is. All Human perceptions are limited, contingent and corrupted perceptions of what God actively sees and has truly defined. Without objective knowledge I cannot give you the mathematically perfect dimensions and possibilities of Hume’s Billiard Balls but God already knows all this in omniscience and even knows the outcome without even the need to calculate anything as a matter of praescientia. All human experiences and perceptual realities in our postlapsarian state are corrupted cognitions of what God has spoken as objective truth from the beginning. Regeneration itself being the gracious regeneration of the cognitive and emotional faculties of the spirit and soul according to God’s active word as spoken praedestinatio. Even prelapsarian man could not have perfect perceptions of things (though they were not corrupted) because man is a limited and created being. Now, one might say, “wait a minute, that sounds very Kantian”, and in truth the idea of intracontingent co-relationships in an epistemological chain is very Kantian. However, I am not a Kantian and am a convicted Gnesio-Lutheran; that which appears as Kantian here is actually a type of Reformed Epistemology. The distinguishing difference between the two schools of thought is the Lutheran emphasis on objective external realism. Kant thinks our perceptions are just limited internal constructs in our minds of the world as phenomenon, Kant does not believe that we can perceive the real objectivity of things. Whereas the flavor of Realism I am proposing is influenced from Luther and Augustin who view human perceptions as unreliable and corrupted experiences of what the world really is. Kant doesn’t think that there is really a way to understand objectivity and thus human reason determines the objective as best it can while Reformed Epistemology says that human reason is only capable insofar as it orients around that which is objective.

Let’s get back to Russel though. Russel doesn’t seem to realize that he’s also engaging in his own form of hybrid prescriptive disputation over definitional minutiae whereby the ‘thing’ must fully be manifest in perfect form according to Russel’s subjective definitional standards before the thing can be spoken of. If I have a mouse can I truly call it a mouse if it is not a perfect realization of his concept of a mouse? The answer would seem to be no. An example using Russel’s unicorn would be that of a unicorn piñata. According to Russel, it would be amiss of me to refer to the piñata as a unicorn in any way because only the concept of unicorn applies to it, there is no real unicorn present. However, I contend that language simply is not used that way, the piñata can be referred to as a unicorn because a substantial amount of the necessary properties of a unicorn(both in concept and in ontology) are represented in the instantiation of the piñata thus it has the quality of a piñata. The unicorn piñata can be referred to as either [A] or [B] or both because the properties of A and B are significantly present in the instantiation of the object regardless of the purely conceptualized x and y. If we are to accept Russel’s hyper-specific categorization of words then we could not call most things by any signifier, seeing as in this case the concept of a unicorn is not even fully realized in a piñata nor is the concept of a piñata realized in a piñata of a unicorn(because traditional piñata’s are a different shape and have specific materials). Bertrand in his work goes on to say that we cannot conclusively talk about the subject of the person Hamlet because he’s not a real person and yet in both prescriptive and descriptive usage of language we can because the person of Hamlet is a realized thing even though he is not actually an instantiated thing. The actor on the stage can be called by the personhood of [Hamlet] because the properties and attributes of the thing(even as concept) Hamlet are being realized on the stage even if there is not a most strictly literal and physical instantiation of the person of Hamlet. If I say, “I have a pot”, there will be attributes and/or properties of the thing itself that align with the concept of pot. Likewise, if I say “I have a unicorn” there are going to be attributes and/or properties of the thing itself that align with the concept of a unicorn.

Russel’s main issue here is that he believes imagination, thoughts and feelings in regard to a priori understanding are merely fictional so therefor I can never apply the concept of unicorn to even partial instantiations of that concept because the concept itself is imaginary. He backs this argument up with a logic proof by stating “now proceed to define generally the meaning of propositions which contain ambiguous descriptions. Suppose we wish to make some statement about "a so-and-so," where "so-and-so's" are those objects that have a certain property ф, i.e. those objects x for which the propositional function фx is true. (E.g. if we take " a man" as our instance of " a so-and-so," x will be "фx is human.") Let us now wish to assert the property ψ of " a so-and-so," i.e. we wish to assert that " a so-and-so" has that property which x has when ψx is true. (E.g. in the case of " I met a man," ψx will be " I met x.") Now the proposition that " a so-and-so" has the property ψ is not a proposition of the form "ψx." If it were, " a so-and-so" would have to be identical with x for a suitable x; and although (in a sense) this may be true in some cases, it is certainly not true in such a case as "a unicorn." It is just this fact, that the statement that a so-and-so has the property ψ is not of the form ψx, which makes it possible for " a so-and-so" to be, in a certain clearly definable sense, " unreal." The definition is as follows :—

The statement that " an object having the property ф has the property ψ" means : " The joint assertion of фx and ψx is not always false." So far as logic goes, this is the same proposition as might be expressed by " some ф’s are ψ's"; but rhetorically there is a difference, because in the one case there is a suggestion of singularity, and in the other case of plurality. This, however, is not the important point. The important point is that, when rightly analysed, propositions verbally about "a so-and-so" are found to contain no constituent represented by this phrase. And that is why such propositions can be significant even when there is no such thing as a so-and-so. The definition of existence, as applied to ambiguous descriptions, results from what was said at the end of the preceding chapter…. We come now to the main subject of the present chapter, namely, the definition of the word the (in the singular). One very important point about the definition of " a so-and-so" applies equally to " the so-and-so"; the definition to be sought is a definition of propositions in which this phrase occurs, not a definition of the phrase itself in isolation. In the case of " a so-and-so," this is fairly obvious: no one could suppose that " a man" was a definite object, which could be defined by itself. [Emphasis mine]

Socrates is a man, Plato is a man, Aristotle is a man, but we cannot infer that "a man" means the same as « Socrates» means and also the same as " Plato" means and also the same as " Aristotle" means, since these three names have different meanings. Nevertheless, when we have enumerated all the men in the world, there is nothing left of which we can say, " This is a man, and not only so, but it is the" a man,' the quintessential entity that is just an indefinite man without being anybody in particular." It is of course quite clear that whatever there is in the world is definite : if it is a man it is one definite man and not any other. Thus there cannot be such an entity as " a man" to be found in the world, as opposed to specific men. And accordingly it is natural that we do not define " a man" itself, but only the propositions in which it occurs. In the case of " the so-and-so" this is equally true, though at first sight less obvious.”

In Summary, Russel believes that “a so and so” is not an individual “so and so” or universal “so and so” but merely a functional within a proposition that is made definitive by the proposition. While I slightly agree with Russel and made a similar argument earlier my argument does not reduce the functional and it’s object into merely a part of a proposition as Russel does but as their own independent thing outside/regardless of the descriptive sentence structure. The primary outcome of the two differences is that Russel’s system permits for basically an infinite making of meaning and redefinition whereas the system I have presented acknowledges the real limitations of language and reality while permitting the flexibility for the use of language to openly discuss what Russel calls “unreal” objects and concepts by acknowledging the reality of their properties.

Here we have come to the crux of the argument. There are two major points that the either side of the argument hinges upon, the first being the relationship between objects and their attributes and properties, the second being that contrary to Russel’s presupposition which I’ve emphasized; both objects and concepts do maintain a definitive existence in both the positive and/or in the negative. And as I’ve covered already, the existence of such things are contingent upon a preexistent “experiencer” that defines things according to transcendental knowledge.

On the first part, my contention is simply stated thus; “all objects(whether they be instantiated or not) have attributes and properties. The word(s) that we use to refer to the attributes or properties allow us to communicate regarding the object. The attributes and properties of the thing are how the thing is defined. Thus, we can refer to things without having hyperliteral individual instantiations of things. Human perceptions are not capable of taking in the fullness of a thing either in instantiation or as concept, thus there must be something that is defining all things according to perfect knowledge of what all things are both in instantiation and in concept, otherwise a real attribute or property is never being communicated about in any point in time.” So, to embrace Russel’s symbols and explain within his concepts; the properties of ф and ψ are always connected to x, they are properties that belong to x rather than being just logic structures that exist apart from x as Russel proposes.

The above is one of the primary issues here, but there is also another major issue; that Russel’s ф and ψ are representing entire sentence structures and are too categorically inclusive. Russel can get away with making nearly any possible sentence descriptive because he’s assuming that ф and ψ are completely valid descriptive sentence structures/kernels regarding x, but they aren’t always valid in every situation, which means that completely untrue statements and even grammatically invalid statements can be represented as having both validity and a positive truth value. Let’s say фx is “I went to the zoo” and ψ x is “I saw a Zebra”, in Russel’s system I could misidentify a Zebra and mean Ostrich when I am speaking of a Zebra yet my misidentification would not actually be a misidentification but only be a valid proposition that contains a false truth value. Some may feel like this is equivocating over what the definition of misidentification really is but it’s important in that misidentification is not just a function in truth functional logic but rather an epistemological error stemming from the misapplication perception, categories, and properties which do require truth functional logic but are not merely truth functional propositions. Even further than that, if we add another proposition into Russel’s formulation it completely breaks, such as; Χx “Zebras are pink” if, “I went to the zoo, I saw a Zebra, and the Zebra had fins,” the sentence would be valid but contain no actual information about the real Zebra given that Zebras do not retain the property or category of having fins. Contrary to Russel’s opinion the sentence also does not retain grammatic validity, because the conceptualization of [Zebra] contains logical forms that necessitate certain properties of Zebra must be met and not contradicted in order for the application of [Zebra]. The conceptualization of [Zebra] does not require a perfect individual instantiation for the application of it to a singular object but is instead both positive and negative impressions(in scholastic use, Phantasm) of categorical observations and a priori reasoning regarding the properties of Zebras in their plurality and of the particular Zebra singular. Proper grammatical and linguistic functioning requires that words have real relations of meaning to the objects that they are pertaining to and not that syntax is a sole and singular definer of “empty” descriptors/signifiers otherwise basic communication becomes completely impossible. For example, all legal documents that refer to any property of an individual as belonging to a specific individual would be completely meaningless given that I could in theory fulfill all the necessary requirements of syntax to make the documents a reference to me, and thus your property is mine. In the case of say my possession of a wallet which is in all actuality your wallet that I have stolen; if we were in Russel’s court of law, I could claim that the wallet is actually mine and not yours by mere virtue of my having the proper grammatical presence in relation to the wallet. So, if Russel as a judge demanded that I prove that claim that the wallet is mine all I would have to do is show that in relation to the wallet in my possession there is something with your name on it and identify myself with/as your name without any evidence and now your possession is legally mine. In reality though x is communicating about a defined subject (which importantly means that the truth values of the subject x must be included and acknowledged) as well as all words that make up the formulary sentences that are relating to x, such as ф and ψ which also have inherent properties and truth values, just as the things/subjects themselves do. Russel’s use of ф and ψ is an over emphasis on the extrinsic and contextual properties, or the meta-logic of syntax that neglects internal syntax, epistemology and grammatical logic and leads to these false conclusions and errors. Or to put it simply, Russel has turned some parts of language into just truth functional logic while also neglecting the actual truth functions of other parts.

There are other issues in Russel’s misuse of ф and ψ such as a lack of a definitive subject in the grammatical structure when one takes his linguistic approach, (in that suddenly both “I” and “man” become the subject of the sentence “I met a man” when formed as фx) or the fact that opposing sentences become equivalent (ex. “I went outside and saw that the sky is blue” and “The sky is blue”, one requires someone having been outside while the other doesn’t) or the position that Russel ends up taking “that descriptions of x and sentence structures regarding x are more valid and true than x” but the issues I have covered so far are the most glaring and adequate enough to show the failures of his position. While Russel and I both agree that context and syntax change the understanding of an object/subject Russel’s system is far too broad in that it lacks the ability to evaluate and explain the truth values of how each individual word comes together to formulate a sentence structure and it fails to communicate about the thing and its properties and attributes, even in concept.

Onto the Second Point. Russel stated, “no one could suppose that " a man" was a definite object, which could be defined by itself.” It is my main thesis that all things and even concepts are definite, by in this I need to specify that such a statement from myself also means that the sum total of all perceptions of things and concepts cannot be humanly perceived and signified and that the things and concepts can in some way change and be defined in both the positive and negative. I do agree with Russel, most things do not define themselves. The only being that can define itself is God by virtue of being a fully sufficient unmoved mover. It is important for the theologically inclined though to note that when we think of theology it is definite because God is a definite being whom we know through the theology, which is revealed most clearly in sacred scripture. Thus, the most truly definite, which is transcendental can be known in part according to God’s self-given definitions and descriptions through scripture which God presently and actively works in and through. Apart from God though, no thing can define itself seeing as no thing has the sufficiency nor the knowledge nor the power to do such though it may operate in its instantiation. However, I diverge from Russel in that all things and concepts are most certainly definite. When we look to things apart from the argument from God, we can still know that all things have a real existence, and all concepts have most categorically accurate conceptualizations. It is because all things do really exist that they are definite in their existence that I cannot say in conventional context “I am a cat” and expect it to convey any real or non-figurative meaning. The issue here is that if we remove the ontological absolutes from how we use language to define things language becomes completely meaningless. For example, when I ask for help finding my keys(that being the metal object that opens pins in a door lock or starts a car) I do not say “help me, I have lost my shades, I need my shades!” anyone who comes to assist would be rightfully upset at me because I seem to be living in a whole other reality and am not acknowledging the ontological truths associated with the object that is signified. Ultimately, the issue of removal of ontological absolutes goes as far as to say that “afhsou couneji brethi, bdasoi” would be a completely valid English sentence so long as the speaker understood what was being said and meant by [afhsou] or [couneji] or what have you. Sure, there may be some language out there that these phonetics are words but it is not the English language, the language that is being used and assumed by both the speaker and the other participant, so it effectively communicates nothing. When we look back to things and their being definitive, there are both real and conceptual limits because of their ontologies. We do not speak of humanity as having five legs because humanity is categorically defined in its ontology.

Now, there are limits to the human perceptions of the ontological existence of a thing and this is why God is the true and ultimate definer because only God can perfectly know all things. However, from the human perspective things remain definite because of their ontology(which rightly understood relies upon God) and the definitive properties therein, though we may describe these things within our limited perspective and using different names and categories. Regardless of the diversity of human perspectives though, the objective underlying property itself exists regardless of the various phonemes it can be called by in different languages or from the differing perspectives. When understanding the diverging human perceptions and perspectives it important to understand that the definitive existence of a thing takes both a positive and negative form, we can affirm that things are healthy insofar as they exist and sick insofar as there is a defect in that existence. Likewise, we can do the same to other properties such as an affirmation that one has brown hair while which can also be known as a negation of blonde hair, or that the aging of white hair and balding is the negative of the original properties the person had. These are all valid ways to talk about a subject even though the information about the subject is different in each place. None of these descriptions are in any way descriptivist but nor are they exclusively prescriptivist because it is accepted that the subject is changing and can be addressed in various ways and through various contexts.

The same rules apply here for concepts, all possible concepts have been foreseen and categorized by God even if the concept does not arise out of God’s will, all evils for example have been predefined according to their ontological, formal and conceptual realities because before they even occurred an omniscient being would’ve known the categorical realities and potential ontological realities/properties of an instantiation of the concept before the concept arose in the mind of the being which conceptualized the thought. This means that all possible concepts have some sort of purely defined a priori existence, one may even go as far as to say that the existence of concepts has a defined realization though one must make clear what they mean by that, and for the sake of length I will have to digress. When we are discussing concepts from a human perspective, we are discussing properties that exist a priori even if they have empirical origins, so when we talk about something that exists solely as concept we are still talking about the categorical perception of a subject’s properties. In the case of concepts the properties belong to the subject according to first principles and internal logical functions such as the law of non-contradiction; a unicorn cannot be both a unicorn and a interdimensional space shuttle given that the two concepts contain properties that cannot be merged without getting rid of so many of the properties of the category of the concept that the concept initial concept itself ceases to be functionally present in the concept and for that reason we can call the concept of a unicorn the concept of a unicorn because it has all of the sufficient properties and categories that make it what it is. The system I have proposed is one where it is both objective and really valid and true to refer to the unicorn piñata(from earlier) as a “unicorn piñata” whereas Russel’s descriptivism makes it only valid insofar as unicorn is undefined and the truth is a consequence of formulating an external logical structure that can agree to it, not in that there is any real category alignment and/or understanding of reality and subjects when speaking about objects or concepts as they exist.

Now having covered the core of Russel’s argument for descriptivism I think it is time to conclude. The great error in descriptivist methodology is in its continuous reliance upon assuming a subjective and contextual standard for normative rules as I have shown here in Bertrand Russel. Descriptivism is really a much worse version of prescriptivism, in that it has turned what are universal rules with meanings into personal rules without meaning; it has not gotten rid of the rules, it’s just made them really obnoxious to interact with especially if you are a person who disagrees with whoever the rule maker may be and this effect massively deteriorates good communication to the point that even gibberish and baby talk can be considered valid English. On the other hand, hardcore prescriptivism is no solution because a hardcore prescriptivist denies metaphorical, cultural, personal, romantic and colloquial functions of language, some even going as far as to deny semantic change. Some prescriptivists would not even admit that context can or should affect the meaning of the word, only it’s grammatical function. Such radically fundamentalist ideas are just completely incompatible with empirical realities and turn language into some sort of never-relevant platonic world.

I think the real solution to the Prescriptive-Descriptive paradigm is to abandon it all together. Systems like Chomsky’s are great systems which acknowledge the variety of linguistic possibilities while still understanding that there are baselines that must exist for language itself to function. David Wilton in his research on the topic suggests abandoning the two categories of prescriptive and descriptive for a system that instead suggests we understand language on a graph chart scale of Normative to Non-Normative and Observational to Aspirational because of the very issues I’ve covered. It’s also important to understand that because language is based in logic and will always have a relation to logic in its grammar and syntax that there will always be some level of prescriptive baseline. Yet as we know, language and its use in society is not a permanent dictionary perfect thing. For these reasons I feel rather comfortable and at home in Augustin’s peripatetic semiotics and understanding of linguistics because it is an older philosophical school that successfully managed to dodge the issues of falling too far to either side of the spectrum while maintaining what would be considered today a prescriptivist perspective in its adherence to logic. As Christians it is important we understand that we don’t really fall totally on either side of this debate because the Word was spoken over all creation to make the things what they are yet man still had free will to understand and perceive what those things are and name the things what they were. Meaning, that from the beginning God had intended our epistemology and will to cooperate with Him, God made and defined the things and Adam named the things, at the beginning there was no Prescriptive vs Descriptive duality, instead Adam’s understanding relied upon all that God had given him, from the land to the logic, in order to not only name the animals but more importantly to converse with and know God. For linguistics to not become prisoner to the very words it defines and schools of thought that it forms, we should move away from this false dilemma and explore new methods of understanding the study of language that won’t push us into extremely unrealistic positions on language for the sake of academic and intellectual preference. It is my hope and goal that other theologians and philosophers would adapt similar systems to the one I presented here and leave behind this faulty dichotomy which seems to plague all of academia. It is for such a reason that I made sure that the ideas I presented work with the widest range of epistemologies, most of them orthodox within Christianity and others not. Regardless, the point is to address where others have not specifically and concisely spoken, so that we together could climb out of the pit of degraded discourse and as I said earlier, be free from the captivity that human actions and reasoning can impose upon us if we exalt it too highly. The Lord’s grace be with you all. Amen.

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Gottesfreund

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