Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken

More prescriptive commentary in the Smiley trilogy

Posted on November 20, 2020

My reading of the last book of John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy, featuring George Smiley, Smiley’s People (1979), produced two more prescriptive comments. (There may have been more, but these caught my attention, possibly because both are in the HUGE … Continue reading →

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George Smiley a prescriptivist?

Posted on October 29, 2020

Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a post about John le Carré, because I’d discovered that, like Kingsley Amis, Len Deighton and Ian McEwan, he too writes metalinguistic usage comments in his novels. My post then was about a … Continue reading →

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A fictional biography?

Posted on October 19, 2020

My book, Describing Prescriptivism, has been out for nearly a year now, but I still run into references to usage guides in the literary literature I read that are too good not to make a note of. Or reread, as … Continue reading →

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Another major publication on prescriptivism

Posted on October 5, 2020

The Bridging the Unbridgeable project may be officially closed, publications by its members continue to appear. Just now, my copy of Language Prescription: Values, Ideologies and Identity landed on our doormat, edited by Don Chapman and Jacob Rawlins. It includes … Continue reading →

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On their way home

Posted on March 5, 2020

Many thanks for letting them stay with us, Kate! It was good to be able to hold them (and to see how small some of them are!).

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Lowth in the Economist

Posted on February 17, 2020

It doesn’t happen very often that Lowth (or indeed myself!) gets a mention in The Economist! Thanks, Alison, for letting us know. (Can anyone help me find the author of the piece? I’d like to tell him/her about my new … Continue reading →

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Just out!

Posted on January 9, 2020

Out today, and open access: Of greengrocers, sports commentators, estate agents and television presenters: who’s in a usage guide and why, published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. With thanks to Olivia Walsh for organising the symposium In the … Continue reading →

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Literally out today

Posted on October 23, 2019
Image | Posted on October 23, 2019 | 1 Comment

Queen of Jetlags

Posted on October 20, 2019

Never thought I’d ever read anything by an influencer (a word not yet in the OED, but a very popular type of online presence these days): Noor de Groot’s Queen of Jetlags (2019). It is not that the book is … Continue reading →

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The Grammarians – by Cathleen Schine

Posted on October 20, 2019

If you’re interested in prescriptivism, you might well want to read this recently published novel. It’s about twins who gradually grow apart, with the one thing binding them to the end being an old copy of a dictionary, probably  by … Continue reading →

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