Anne Abeillé's recently-published book "La Grammaire se Rebelle" describes linguistic prescriptivism as "la jungle puriste" / "the purist jungle". But wait, don't prescriptivists want to turn the natural linguistic wilderness into a well-tended formal garden? Maybe, but in fact prescriptive rules are often incoherent as well as contrary to elite as well as informal usage, as we've often observed. There's more to say about the many metaphors for linguistic prescriptivism — for example, the parallels with socio-political authority and rebellion — but for now, here's the avant-propos of Abeillé's book, followed by Google Translate's (very good) English version: Qu’est-ce que la grammaire ? L’ensemble des règles qu’on emploie pour parler et pour écrire. Ces règles sont robustes et souvent séculaires, bien intériorisées par la plupart des francophones, même s’ils n’en sont pas toujours conscients.…