Monthly Archives: April 2018

Hisself: should we allow it or not?

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

And here is another blogpost from one of my MA students. Maha Khalil would like to know why the non-standard reflexive pronoun hisself remains non-standard today. The blogpost was inspired …  … by an article published by the Scottish writer … Continue reading →

Posted in polls and surveys, usage features | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Three more project publications!

Posted on April 20, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Just out: Standardising English: Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language, ed. by Linda Pillière, Wilfred Andrieu, Valérie Kerfelec and Diana Lewis (2018), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carmen Ebner, Concepts of correctness and acceptability in British English: … Continue reading →

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Dialect or simply illiterate?

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Ilse Stolte needs to write blogposts for my course Non-Standard English (and prescriptivism) as well. Here is the first one, and one with a request to our readers to fill in a survey on the acceptability of two stigmatised language … Continue reading →

Posted in polls and surveys | Tagged | 2 Comments

How do the Dutch feel about non-standard features of English?

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Michèle Huisman’s first blogpost, and she too is doing a survey for her paper in the course Non-standard English which I’m teaching. So please help her collect data for her upcoming presentation! In 2017, The Netherlands came first … Continue reading →

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A centenary: The Elements of Style

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

Putting the final touches (I hope!) to my book on usage guides and usage problems,  I suddenly realised that William Strunk‘s famous Elements of Style is a hundred years old this year. Will anyone, publisher or critic or otherwise, pay attention to … Continue reading →

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I come, I seen, I chased him up the street

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

And here is Amos van Baalen’s first blogpost. And if you are a native speaker of Australian or British English, do take the time to contribute to his research by filling in the survey below. It won’t take a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features, usage guide | Tagged | 1 Comment

Great to have a copy!

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

The HUGE database contains only a selection of usage guides. On the one hand, because there are so many of them, but on the other because it wasn’t always possible to lay our hands on a copy that could be … Continue reading →

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Well I never! My … was …

Posted on April 2, 2018 by adrianstenton

I was reading the UK Autocar this week-end, and came across this: “My ghast is well and truly flabbered.” This stopped me in my tracks on two counts: (i) I could never say it, let alone write it; and (ii) … Continue reading →

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