John Benjamins Publishing Company
Five Hundred Mistakes Corrected
Abstract
The anonymous Five hundred mistakes corrected (1856) is one of the very earliest American English usage guides. In its approach, contents and use of proscriptive metalanguage it fits into the tradition of usage guide writing, which had started in England nearly a century before and which continues, with ever increasing numbers of publications, down to the present day. But whereas in England the earliest usage guides served an important function to people who became socially mobile after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in America the rise and popularity of the genre is closely linked to increasing numbers of immigrants from Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Abstract
The anonymous Five hundred mistakes corrected (1856) is one of the very earliest American English usage guides. In its approach, contents and use of proscriptive metalanguage it fits into the tradition of usage guide writing, which had started in England nearly a century before and which continues, with ever increasing numbers of publications, down to the present day. But whereas in England the earliest usage guides served an important function to people who became socially mobile after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in America the rise and popularity of the genre is closely linked to increasing numbers of immigrants from Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Studying real-time change in the adverbial subjunctive 13
- Political perspectives on linguistic innovation in independent America 37
- Five Hundred Mistakes Corrected 55
- Transatlantic perspectives on late nineteenth-century English usage 73
- “Provincial in England, but in common use with us” 99
- “Across the ocean ferry” 117
- Legitimising linguistic devices in A Cheering Voice from Upper Canada (1834) 135
- Nineteenth-century institutional (im)politeness 153
- ‘[B]ut sure its only a penny after all’ 179
- Assigned gender in a corpus of nineteenth-century correspondence among settlers in the American Great Plains 199
- Index 219
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Studying real-time change in the adverbial subjunctive 13
- Political perspectives on linguistic innovation in independent America 37
- Five Hundred Mistakes Corrected 55
- Transatlantic perspectives on late nineteenth-century English usage 73
- “Provincial in England, but in common use with us” 99
- “Across the ocean ferry” 117
- Legitimising linguistic devices in A Cheering Voice from Upper Canada (1834) 135
- Nineteenth-century institutional (im)politeness 153
- ‘[B]ut sure its only a penny after all’ 179
- Assigned gender in a corpus of nineteenth-century correspondence among settlers in the American Great Plains 199
- Index 219
