Blog Archives

What are “usage guides” called in other languages?

Posted on October 21, 2011 by BtU Admin

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 →

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Your favourite usage guide?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by BtU Admin

“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 →

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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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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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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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