I see. In that case, let me rephrase: every member of the class of linguists that I am aware of, including but not limited to the ones on Language Log, the ones at my old department and the ones at my current department, think that Strunk and White and other similar prescriptivism is a load of crap and are in favour of usage-based grammaticality.
I also request that any subsequent comments I make in this thread be downvoted, because I am clearly having problems disengaging.
Again, what do Strunk and White have to do with it? They were giving advice on writing style, saying “If you say it this way your readers will like your writing better”, not “This is the correct way to say it”. Now perhaps they gave bad advice, it is a point on which reasonable men might differ, but what of it? To beat up on Strunk and White may be popular, but it has nothing to do with prescriptivism in linguistics.
I see. In that case, let me rephrase: every member of the class of linguists that I am aware of, including but not limited to the ones on Language Log, the ones at my old department and the ones at my current department, think that Strunk and White and other similar prescriptivism is a load of crap and are in favour of usage-based grammaticality.
I also request that any subsequent comments I make in this thread be downvoted, because I am clearly having problems disengaging.
Again, what do Strunk and White have to do with it? They were giving advice on writing style, saying “If you say it this way your readers will like your writing better”, not “This is the correct way to say it”. Now perhaps they gave bad advice, it is a point on which reasonable men might differ, but what of it? To beat up on Strunk and White may be popular, but it has nothing to do with prescriptivism in linguistics.