description (n.)

The general sense of this term is found in LINGUISTICS, identifying one of the main aims of the subject – to give a comprehensive, systematic, objective and precise account of the patterns and use of a specific LANGUAGE or DIALECT, at a particular point in time. This definition suggests several respects in which descriptive is in contrast with other conceptions of linguistic enquiry. The emphasis on objectivity, systematicness, etc., places it in contrast with the PRESCRIPTIVE aims of much TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR: the aim of descriptive linguistics is to describe the facts of linguistic usage as they are, and not how they ought to be, with reference to some imagined ideal state. The emphasis on a given time places it in contrast with HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, where the aim is to demonstrate linguistic change: descriptive linguistics aims to describe a language SYNCHRONICALLY, at a particular time (not necessarily the present – one can describe the linguistic patterns of any period). The emphasis on ‘a’ language distinguishes the subject from COMPARATIVE linguistics, as its name suggests, and also from GENERAL linguistics, where the aim is to make theoretical statements about language as a whole.

It ought not to be forgotten, of course, that there is an interdependence between these various branches of the subject: a description is the result of an analysis, which must in turn be based on a set of theoretical assumptions. But in descriptive linguistics the theory is only a means to an end, viz. the production of a descriptive grammar (or one of its subdivisions, e.g. PHONOLOGY, LEXICON, SYNTAX, MORPHOLOGY). An approach which is characterized by an almost exclusive concern with description, in the above sense, is known as descriptivism, and its proponents as descriptivists. In linguistics, the term is usually applied to American anthropological and STRUCTURALIST studies before the ‘generativist’ approach of the late 1950s. Within GENERATIVE grammar, also, the phrase descriptive adequacy adds a special dimension to the use of the term: it refers to an account of the NATIVE-SPEAKER’S linguistic COMPETENCE (and not merely to an account of a CORPUS of DATA, as would be intended by the earlier use of ‘description’).