Tag Archives: John le Carré

Le Carré’s main character spinning in his grave

Posted on October 17, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

Reading another spy novel by John Le Carré, this time Absolute Friends (2003), I didn’t expect to come across any metalinguistic comments relating to prescriptivism since most of the novel is situated in Germany. But I did find this absolute … Continue reading →

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The pedant in him …

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

… is sparked off by spotting an exclamation mark where a question would normally be expected. Or actually, by the vacuousness of the contents of the welcoming message found when booking into his hotel room. All this is part of … Continue reading →

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More prescriptive commentary in the Smiley trilogy

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Ingrid Tieken

My reading of the last book of John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy, featuring George Smiley, Smiley’s People (1979), produced two more prescriptive comments. (There may have been more, but these caught my attention, possibly because both are in the HUGE … Continue reading →

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George Smiley a prescriptivist?

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Ingrid Tieken

Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a post about John le Carré, because I’d discovered that, like Kingsley Amis, Len Deighton and Ian McEwan, he too writes metalinguistic usage comments in his novels. My post then was about a … Continue reading →

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