Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing Standards across Time and Space

Published by Multilingual Matters 2016

Prescription and Tradition in Language

Establishing Standards across Time and Space

Edited by: Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Carol Percy

In the series Multilingual Matters

https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783096510

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book crystallises key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, contextualising case studies across languages and cultures. It breaks new ground with its multilingual approach, helping to balance the otherwise strong emphasis on English in English language publications on prescriptivism.

Author / Editor information

Tieken-Boon van Ostade Ingrid :

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.

Percy Carol :

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.

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.

Reviews

Colin Reilly, University of Glasgow, UK:

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.

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.

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.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Carol Percy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
1. Prescription and Tradition: Establishing Standards across Time and Space Carol Percy and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1: General and Theoretical
2. Defining ‘Standard’: Towards a Cross-Cultural Definition of the Language Norm Dick Smakman and Sandra Nekesa Barasa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
3. Prescriptivism and Writing Systems Florian Coulmas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
4. ‘What is Correct Chinese?’ Revisited Henning Klöter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
5. The Uselessness of the Useful: Language Standardisation and Variation in Multilingual Contexts Felix K. Ameka Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
6. Prescriptivism and Sociolinguistic Competence in German as a Foreign Language Katja Lochtman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Part 2: Prescription and Tradition
7. Prescriptivism in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of France and England Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
8. ‘A Higher Standard of Correctness than is Quite Desirable’: Linguistic Prescriptivism in Charles Dickens’s Journals Rita Queiroz de Barros Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
9. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Competing Language Norms in the Southern Low Countries (1815–1830) Gijsbert Rutten and Rik Vosters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
10. The Syntax of Others: ‘Un-Icelandic’ Verb Placement in 19thand Early 20th-Century Icelandic Heimir van der Feest Viðarsson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
11. School Grammars and Language Guides: Prescriptivism in the German Language Codex in the Early 20th Century Dominik Banhold Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	168
Part 3: Usage Guides: An English Tradition
12. A Perspective on Prescriptivism: Language in Reviews of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage Robin Straaijer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
13. Which Items Need to be Standardised? Variation in the Choice of Entries in Usage Guides Mark Kaunisto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
14. ‘Garnering’ Respect? The Emergence of Authority in the American Usage Tradition Matthijs Smits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
15. Stalwarts, SNOOTS and Some Readers: How ‘Traditional Rules’ are Traditional Don Chapman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238
Part 4: Redefining Boundaries: Current Issues and Challenges
16. ‘Goodbye, Sweet England’: Language, Nation and Normativity in Popular British News Media Martin Gill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
17. Prescription and Tradition: From the French Dictionnaire de l’Académie to the Official French Language Enrichment Process (1996–2014) Danielle Candel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
18. Challenges in the Standardisation of Contemporary Russian Arto Mustajoki Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	288
19. Language Regimentation as Soviet Inheritance: Joining Scholarship and State Ideology Loreta Vaicekauskiene Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
20. Prescription and Language Management in Macedonia Aleksandra Gjurkova Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318
21. The Standardisation Process of Frisian: A Word List as a Result Pieter Duijff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
22. The Standardisation of Pronunciation: Basque Today, between Maintenance and Variation Miren Lourdes Oñederra Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	342
Epilogue: On Establishing the Standard Language – and Language Standards Pam Peters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	355
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367

Language: English
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Keywords: Standardisation; Prescriptivism; Linguistic ideology; Language planning; Sociolinguistics; Linguistic ideologies; Linguistic standardisation; Linguistic prescriptivism; Traditional language

eBook

Published: November 14, 2016
ISBN: 9781783096510