Is descriptivism that thing where you take words on face value and be as implication- and intention-agnostic as possible? because that seems to be what the OP is saying.
Is descriptivism that thing where you take words on face value and be as implication- and intention-agnostic as possible? because that seems to be what the OP is saying.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Basically, the OP's point is that the teacher is intentionally nagging the student about misusing "can", despite understanding the student's request, so the teacher is being prescriptivist by enforcing what he/she thinks considers proper use of language, thus leading the student to spite the teacher by being a descriptivist (i.e. the opposite).
The way I misunderstood it is that the teacher is simply taking, at face value, the student's words, and being "descriptivist" in the sense of looking as objectively as possible at the meanings of the words rather than "prescribing" a meaning to them based on context, and thus genuinely misunderstanding the student's request, and because of this I thought that the teacher was a descriptivist, and thus the joke did not make sense.
(I wonder if this says something about the choice of these labels for these two positions...)
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
See, I came to the conclusion that was the opposite of what @Tatterhood suggests it is.
So I'm still confused.
Basically, the OP's point is that the teacher is intentionally nagging the student about misusing "can", despite understanding the student's request, so the teacher is being prescriptivist by enforcing what he/she thinks considers proper use of language, thus leading the student to spite the teacher by being a descriptivist (i.e. the opposite).
The way I misunderstood it is that the teacher is simply taking, at face value, the student's words, and being "descriptivist" in the sense of looking as objectively as possible at the meanings of the words rather than "prescribing" a meaning to them based on context, and thus genuinely misunderstanding the student's request, and because of this I thought that the teacher was a descriptivist, and thus the joke did not make sense.
(I wonder if this says something about the choice of these labels for these two positions...)