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John Honey’s The Language Trap, subtitled “Race, class, and the ‘standard English’ issue in British schools”, is a 38-page pamphlet published in 1983 by the National Council for Educational Standards. It is a controversial document to say the least, even by … Continue reading
This is a suggestion made by John Honey in Language is Power (1997:166-168). Estuary English Honey describes as being typically characterised by t-glottaling and l-vocalisation (though there are many other characteristics of Estuary English as well). Already in 1989 he … Continue reading
In an earlier post, we mentioned our quest for reviews of John Honey’s Language is Power, first published in 1997 by Faber and Faber. Several have come up, including a review by Jean Aitchison in the Sunday Times of 14 … Continue reading
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In David Crystal’s Encyclopedia of the English Language (p. 196), Fowler is portrayed in his swimsuit, and so he is in the OxfordWords blog “From telegraphese to texting: one hundred years of the Concise Oxford Dictionary“. I’ve always wondered why: after all, … Continue reading
Kate Wild sent us a link to a wonderful little item on Youtube in which Stephen Fry gives his views on prescriptivism. We hope you will enjoy watching it. Please let us know if there are any more such Youtube films … Continue reading
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Honey’s book, published in 1997, is a controversial publication, to put it mildly. We are looking for reviews of the book in addition to the ones by Peter Trudgill, Roy Harris and Paul Bennett. A rejoinder to Trudgill’s review appeared … Continue reading
We are looking for images that will help to give a visual illustration of prescriptivism. There are of course pictures of Henry Watson Fowler, the author of Modern English Usage, but what else is there that we could use?
The usage guide seems a typical English – British as well as American – phenomenon, though one of our commenters, Nadia Petrova, has already drawn our attention to the fact that they are also popular in Russia today. But what … Continue reading
“How can our listeners help you?” was a question Tom Holland asked when he interviewed Ingrid Tieken on the BBC Radio 4 programme Making History (broadcast: Tuesday 18 October 2011). Listeners of Making History can help us by telling us … Continue reading
The French-speaking world is a rather ‘monocentric’ linguistic community and prescriptivism has been an important part of the discourse on the French language for centuries. My contribution to this blog will be to share some information about purism in France … Continue reading
Bridging the Unbridgeable 