A bibliography of prescriptivism

Posted on October 11, 2011 by BtU Admin

We are currently compiling a bibliography of prescriptivism. There are of course various publications we know about, such as the following:

  • Bennett, Karen (2009) ‘English academic style manuals: a survey’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8: 43-54.
  • Bex, Tony (1999). “Representations of English in Twentieth-Century Britain: Fowler, Gowers and Partidge”, in: Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds.), Standard English. The Widening Debate. London and New York: Routledge, 89-109.
  • Burchfield, Robert (1991). “The Fowler Brothers and the Tradition of Usage Handbooks”, in: Gerhard Leitner, ed. English Traditional Grammars: An International Perspective. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 93-111.
  • Busse, Ulrich and Anne Schröder (2006). “From prescriptivism to descriptivism? 140 years of English usage guides: Some old and new controversies”, in: Christoph Houswitschka, Gabriele Knappe and Anja Müller, eds. Anglistentag 2005 Bamberg. Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 457-473.
  • Finegan, Edward (2001). “Usage.” In: John Algeo (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language Vol. 6. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. 358-421.
  • Peters, Pam. 2006. “English Usage: prescription and Description”. In Bas Aarts and April McMahon (eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics.Oxford: Blackwell. 759-780.

But there must be many more that other people know about. So do leave your comment here with additional titles: between us, we will compile a list that will be of use to anyone interested in the topic.

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Fowler, Garner or …?

Posted on October 7, 2011 by BtU Admin

Which usage guide do you normally consult? We’d be interested in finding out about readers’ preferences for particular usage guides. What do you consult them for (that is, if you do consult them …), and how frequently? Do you always find what you are looking for?

Garner’s Modern American Usage seems to be positively reviewed, according to the entry in Wikipedia in any case. Also, three editions of the book were published between 1998 and 2009. Compared to the three editions of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926, 1965 and 1996), does this suggest that Garner’s book is more popular? Or that there is a greater need for guidance on usage in the US than in the UK?

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Earlier use of the new “like”?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by BtU Admin

Mesthrie et al. (Introducing Sociolinguistics 2nd ed., 2009:117-8) discuss “three newer uses” of like, the “quotative” use (I’m like why did you do that), the use of like as a hedge (My parents like hate you) and the use of like as … Continue reading →

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Attitudes to usage: second poll

Posted on October 5, 2011 by BtU Admin

This poll asks for your attitudes to the acceptability of the next five items in Attitudes to English Usage, by W.H. Mittins, Mary Salu, Mary Edmonson, and Sheila Coyne (OUP, 1970). If you haven’t done the first poll yet, please do … Continue reading →

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Prescriptivism in different linguistic fields

Posted on October 4, 2011 by BtU Admin

Lynne Truss’s Eats Shoots and Leaves (2003) deals with punctuation, while Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926 and later editions) deals with grammar and lexis. Do we find usage guides in fairly equal numbers for all linguistic fields, spelling, punctuation, grammar, pronunciation? Have there perhaps been any changes in focus in this respect over the years?

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Prescriptivism and sociolinguistics

Posted on October 4, 2011 by BtU Admin

One of the few introductions to sociolinguistics that includes a discussion on prescriptivism is Mesthrie et al.’s Introducing Sociolinguistics (2nd ed. 2009, Edinburgh University Press).

On p. 110, the book defines prescriptivism as “the dominant ideology in language education [which] holds that changes in language occur to the detriment of the language, and are a result of sloppiness, laziness and a lack of attention to logic”.

The authors add: “Sociolinguists feel that there is thus a need for a more scholarly understanding of the processes of change and their social context”, and it is interesting to see how the notion of prescriptivism – fairly uniquely it appears – is made to feature in this approach to sociolinguistics.

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More linguistic interest in prescriptivism?

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

Whether more linguists are getting interested in prescriptivism is hard to say as I have no baseline data so to speak. But during the Helsinki Corpus Festival the term prescriptivism occurred quite a number of times. To begin with, there … Continue reading →

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Phrasal verbs and informal usage

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

The question whether phrasal verbs are typical of informal usage was raised by Paula Rodríguez-Puente at the Helsinki Corpus Festival yesterday. The title of her paper was “”Talking ‘private’ with phrasal verbs: A corpus-based study of English phrasal verbs from 1650 to … Continue reading →

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A which hunt

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

This was how David Denison (Manchester), in a paper jointly presented at the Helsinki Corpus Festival with Marianne Hundt (Zurich), described the American phobia for which in non-restrictive relative clauses. American users are advised to “use that before a restrictive clause and which before … Continue reading →

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Loss of the passive

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

Today, Geoffrey Leech (University of Lancaster) gave a plenary lecture at the Helsinki Corpus Festival, called “Decline and (?)disappearance: The negative side of recent changes in Standard English”. One of his examples of recent change was the loss of the … Continue reading →

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