BOOK
Prescription and Tradition in Language
Prof. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade | Prof. Carol Percy
(2016)
Additional Information
Book Details
Abstract
This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world and addresses questions such as how nationalistic idealisations of ‘traditional’ language persist (or shift) amid language change, linguistic variation and multilingualism. The volume explores issues of standardisation and the sociolinguistic phenomenon of prescription as a formative influence on the notional standard language as well as the interconnections between these in a wide range of geographical contexts. It balances the otherwise strong emphasis on English in English language publications on prescriptivism and breaks new ground with its multilingual approach across languages and nations. The book will appeal to scholars working within different linguistic traditions interested in questions relating to all aspects of standardisation and prescriptivism.
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade is Professor and Chair of English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on sociohistorical linguistics, standardisation and prescriptivism, Late Modern English, 18th and 19th-century letter writing, and Jane Austen’s language.
Carol Percy is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her main research interests are Late Modern English, standardisation and prescriptivism, history of education, women’s studies, and children’s literature.
This volume shows how much we gain in our understanding of standardization and standard languages by looking at a wide range of languages over time, in monolingual and, importantly, multilingual cultures. No matter what language you study, papers here will challenge your thinking about theory and methods and how prescription works in today’s world.
The diverse contexts which are covered...give a global aspect to this readable and accessible volume. It is an important work in (re)theorizing prescriptivism and the process of language standardization. It ‘expands the conceptual framework for dis-cussing standard languages’ (p.355), and it does this through the multiplicity and breadth of languages and contexts – both across time and space – which are presented.
Colin Reilly, University of Glasgow, UK
This anthology provides useful reading for scholars, practitioners and policy makers interested or working in language policy, language planning, variation and change. The book offers the reader a valuable overview of the issues related to standardisation of major and minor language across the globe.
Dina Strong, Birkbeck University of London, UK
Long ignored by professional linguists, or dismissed as ‘unnatural’ or ‘artificial’, prescriptivism in language is in this volume the object of serious scientific investigation. This collection explores the vast range of sociolinguistic contexts for prescriptivism, and firmly demonstrates the important place for this research in general linguistics.
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
Contents | v | ||
Acknowledgements | ix | ||
Contributors | xi | ||
1 Prescription and Tradition: Establishing Standards across Time and Space | 1 | ||
Part 1 General and Theoretical | 21 | ||
2 Defining ‘Standard’: Towards a Cross-Cultural Definition of the Language Norm | 23 | ||
3 Prescriptivism and Writing Systems | 39 | ||
4 ‘What is Correct Chinese?’ Revisited | 57 | ||
5 The Uselessness of the Useful: Language Standardisation and Variation in Multilingual Contexts | 71 | ||
6 Prescriptivism and Sociolinguistic Competence in German as a Foreign Language | 88 | ||
Part 2 Prescription and Tradition | 103 | ||
7 Prescriptivism in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of France and England | 105 | ||
8 ‘A Higher Standard of Correctness than is Quite Desirable’: Linguistic Prescriptivism in Charles Dickens’s Journals | 121 | ||
9 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Competing Language Norms in the Southern Low Countries (1815−1830) | 137 | ||
10 The Syntax of Others:‘Un-Icelandic’ Verb Placement in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Icelandic | 152 | ||
11 School Grammars and Language Guides: Prescriptivism in the German Language Codex in the Early 20th Century | 168 | ||
Part 3 Usage Guides: An English Tradition | 183 | ||
12 A Perspective on Prescriptivism: Language in Reviews of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage | 185 | ||
13 Which Items Need to be Standardised? Variation in the Choice of Entries in Usage Guides | 202 | ||
14 ‘Garnering’ Respect? The Emergence of Authority in the American Usage Tradition | 221 | ||
15 Stalwarts, SNOOTS and Some Readers: How ‘Traditional Rules’ are Traditional | 238 | ||
Part 4 Redefining Boundaries: Current Issues and Challenges | 253 | ||
16 ‘Goodbye, Sweet England’: Language, Nation and Normativity in Popular British News Media | 255 | ||
17 Prescription and Tradition: From the French Dictionnairede l’Académie to the Official French Language Enrichment Process (1996−2014) | 273 | ||
18 Challenges in the Standardisation of Contemporary Russian | 288 | ||
19 Language Regimentation as Soviet Inheritance: Joining Scholarship and State Ideology | 303 | ||
20 Prescription and Language Management in Macedonia | 318 | ||
21 The Standardisation Process of Frisian: A Word List as a Result | 331 | ||
22 The Standardisation of Pronunciation: Basque Today, between Maintenance and Variation | 342 | ||
Epilogue: On Establishing the Standard Language – and Language Standards | 355 | ||
Index | 367 |