Quoth resident English professor emeritus John Lawler: There is no such
thing as "prescriptive linguistics". There are no "prescriptive linguists".
You actually hafta understand something about grammar to be a grammarian,
and something about language to be a linguist. There are a lot of people
with strong opinions about certain types of constructions and usages, which
they peeve about constantly; but they are not linguists. Nor grammarians.
As P.J. O'Rourke puts it, "Opinions on language are as interesting as