descriptivismn.

1935 Jrnl. Polit. Econ. 43 403 Exceptional ability is required if a fall into pure descriptivism is to be avoided in applying the method.

1979 M. Bunge Causality & Mod. Sci. (ed. 3) 367 A similar movement away from descriptivism and towards the search for causal links occurred at about the same time in anthropology and archeology.

1989 Jrnl. Aesthetics & Art Crit. 47 394/2 The artistic practices and values of modernism such as the rejection of slavish descriptivism, the emphasis on immediacy, [etc.].

2015 J. A. Garrido Ardila Hist. Spanish Novel i. 31 Baroja's later works embraced the techniques of observation and description.., but despite all the descriptivism, his narrative technique differs substantially from those of the realist and naturalist novelists.

1948 A. C. Ewing in Rev. Metaphysics 1 107 By their ‘descriptivism’ I mean that they always assume that moral judgments are always would-be descriptions of facts and nothing else.

1963 R. M. Hare Freedom & Reason ii. 17 The thesis..that moral judgements are a kind of descriptive judgements..is descriptivism.

2011 M. Chrisman in C. Miller Continuum Comp. to Ethics ii. 37 Expressivists are opposed to descriptivism in the ethical case and instead think ethical sentences mean what they do in virtue of the conative attitudes that they can be used to express.

1949 Language 25 62 The views are entirely traditional with respect to such phenomena as umlaut and breaking, and there is no trace of descriptivism, structuralism, or other heresies.

1966 N. Chomsky Cartesian Linguistics 106 One of the most striking features of American descriptivism in the 1940s was its insistence on justification in terms of precisely specified procedures of analysis.

2013 J. P. Blevins in K. Allan Oxf. Handbk. Hist. Linguistics xviii. 421 Many of the works that appeared in the first flush of descriptivism in the early 1940s had something of the character of Bloomfieldian exegesis.

1959 College Composition & Communication 10 178 Probably the most important point of definition..was the distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism in the study and teaching of grammar and usage.

1979 Dictionaries 1 1 Webster's descriptivism was..not taken for what it was, but interpreted as authorizing language permissiveness.

1992 Amer. Speech 67 98 The editors once again present recommendations rather than categorical rules. In the best traditions of descriptivism, they encourage the writer to decide when and where a change is warranted.

2007 Silver City (New Mexico) Sun-News (Nexis) 21 July On the spelling front, I find myself dwelling in the nether world somewhere between prescriptivism and descriptivism.