Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken

Febuary, febry

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

‘Last February? Last February? Oh yes, I was here last February.’ He [the janitor]  pronounced it exactly as spelled.’  (p. 236) The passage is from Raymond Chandler‘s novel The Little Sister (1949). When I came across this metalinguistic comment, I was wondering … Continue reading →

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Guess what?! You don’t just speak a dialect; you’re also illiterate and uneducated!

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

And here is Ilse Stolte’s second blogpost, on a topic related to the first one she wrote about: For the course on Non-Standard English and prescriptivism, I spend a great deal of time reading through entries of usage guides in … Continue reading →

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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 →

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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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There/their/they’re confusion: something of all times

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Ingrid Tieken

In discussing new usage problems discussed on the internet, Hielke Vriesendorp recently noted that there/their/they’re spellings were among the five most commented upon features listed in a Facebook group survey he carried out. Reading an early 17th-century text for the … Continue reading →

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