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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Genre prescriptivism

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Robin Straaijer

I was just thinking how different levels of prescriptiveness, different models of correctness are implemented on different genres or text types. Why for instance is the clipped language of newspaper headlines not considered ‘wrong’ while such usage would be criticised … Continue reading →

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Was Lowth a purist?

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

When I gave a presentation on my recently published book The Bishop’s Grammar (OUP, 2011) in Cambridge earlier this year, a member of the audience asked if Lowth was ever described as a purist. The only reference I could think of was … Continue reading →

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Refusing to condemn “ain’t”

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Ingrid Tieken

This week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review includes an essay by Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist from the University of California (Berkeley), called “When a dictionary could outrage“. Nunberg compares the recent decision of the Oxford English Dictionary to adopt OMG (“Oh My God”) and LOL (“Laughing Out Loud”) among its entries with the adoption of newcomers like wise up and litterbug in Webster’s Third, forty years ago.

The new words in Webster’s Third produced a lot of outcry at the time, particularly the dictionary’s refusal to condemn ain’t or the use of like as a conjunction (see the very first entry in the Blog). Particularly vociferous, according to Nunberg, was Wilson Follett (1887-1963), author of a usage guide called Modern American Usage: A Guide.

(With thanks to Bob Ackerman, Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK.)

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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 were (and still perhaps are) subject to disputed acceptability.

Now, more than 40 years later, we are interested in finding out to what extent these attitudes have changed, so we would like to have your opinion about the five usage items listed here. To the four styles surveyed originally, we added a fifth, usage in internet related language. Multiple answers are allowed.

(See also the very first post in the blog, on the acceptability of like.)

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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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Usage Guide Drive

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Robin Straaijer

Help us bridge the unbridgeable! For the project Bridging the Unbridgeable we are compiling a database of English usage guides and this is why we’re inviting you to contribute. Not nearly as many usage guides are available in electronic form … Continue reading →

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Prescriptivism in pragmatics?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Robin Straaijer

Prescriptive rules tend to focus on syntactic constructions or on pronunciation, but what about some of the more pragmatic aspects of language? What kind of prescriptions primarily concern themselves with the pragmatics of an utterance, with its extralinguistic or situational context? Should … 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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