Author Archives: BtU Admin

Prescriptivism in other languages?

Posted on September 27, 2011 by BtU Admin

Fowler is a virtual icon of British prescriptivism. But what about other languages? Do other languages – French, Dutch, Russian, Chinese … – have similar traditions of prescriptive writing on language for a general public?

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Attitudes to English usage: a poll

Posted on September 23, 2011 by BtU Admin

A survey of attitudes to English usage was carried out in the late 1960s, and published in 1970 as Attitudes to English Usage, by W.H. Mittins, Mary Salu, Mary Edmonson, and Sheila Coyne (OUP). The survey covered 55 sentences that … Continue reading →

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Hun hebben: a Dutch usage problem

Posted on September 22, 2011 by BtU Admin

About 18 months ago, a great uproar arose as a result of a discussion on television between Helen de Hoop, who has a chair in theoretical linguistics at the University of Nijmegen, and the then minister of education in the … Continue reading →

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Project events

Posted on September 21, 2011 by BtU Admin

The first presentation in the Bridging the Unbridgeable project was on 21 September, as a contribution to the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Taalgebruiksseminar: Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, “Bridging the Unbridgeable”. Shortly after that, another paper on the topic of … Continue reading →

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Conference on prescriptivism

Posted on September 20, 2011 by BtU Admin

The next conference on Prescriptivism will be held in Leiden, from 12 – 14 June 2013. It will be hosted by the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. Previous conferences took place in Sheffield, UK (2003), Ragusa, Sicily (2006) and Toronto … Continue reading →

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Attitudes to usage

Posted on September 19, 2011 by BtU Admin

A little while ago, a survey was held among alumni of the English department of the University of Leiden to find out about their attitudes to particular usage problems. The items surveyed can be found in David Crystal’s Encyclopedia of … Continue reading →

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Pocket Fowler

Posted on September 15, 2011 by BtU Admin

The pocket edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage is available online. You can access it if you have access to the Oxford English Dictionary. On the OED homepage, click on Oxford Reference Online, then on English Language Reference, on Pocket Fowler’s Modern English Usage: … Continue reading →

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New edition of The King’s English by Kingsley Amis

Posted on September 12, 2011 by BtU Admin

The title of this usage guide was obviously inspired by its famous ancestor published in 1881, by George Washington Moon. As for the title of Amis’s book, being called “the King” was “a nickname he tolerated”, according to his son … Continue reading →

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“Telling it like it is”

Posted on September 12, 2011 by BtU Admin

On 12 September 2011, Marilyn Hedges received her Master’s degree from the University of Leiden (The Netherlands). Her thesis, which has the above title, is subtitled “An assessment of attitudes to language change based on the use of like“, and … Continue reading →

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