Linguistic prescriptivism, which promotes and enforces “correct” and “incorrect” language use, is a feature of our everyday lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Beyond traditional prescriptivist outputs, linguistic correction and associated judgements are found throughout popular culture: in the films and series we watch; the music and podcasts we listen to; and the fiction we read. Its presence in these artefacts raises critical questions about how prescriptivism is framed for and disseminated to “ordinary” language users and not just the more limited strata of society who explicitly access texts where prescriptivism is expected, e.g. grammars and style guides.

In this seminar, I will introduce my Leverhulme project and present some (very) initial findings from its innovative crowdsourced database, including examples from ‘Love Island’, Friends’ and ‘Wicked’.