“Splendidly prejudiced”
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Don Chapman
Abstract
This paper examines terms used for disapproval in usage guides during the 19th and 20th centuries. Two corpora are used for this investigation: the Hyper Usage Guide of English database (HUGE) and a corpus of 29 usage guides representing nearly all decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. The terms of disapproval fall into four groups: terms emphasizing correctness (wrong, error), communication (confusing, awkward), varieties of English (variant, slang), and social judgments (silly, ignorant). The examination shows that terms emphasizing correctness are most dominant today and have predominated over time. In contrast, judgmental terms have declined over time, while variation and communication terms have increased. The paper further notes that for shibboleths – prescriptive rules with high salience for “some readers” – a common formulation is that “some writers” or even “many writers” use the disapproved term, thus paralleling the “some readers” who notice the shibboleths.
Abstract
This paper examines terms used for disapproval in usage guides during the 19th and 20th centuries. Two corpora are used for this investigation: the Hyper Usage Guide of English database (HUGE) and a corpus of 29 usage guides representing nearly all decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. The terms of disapproval fall into four groups: terms emphasizing correctness (wrong, error), communication (confusing, awkward), varieties of English (variant, slang), and social judgments (silly, ignorant). The examination shows that terms emphasizing correctness are most dominant today and have predominated over time. In contrast, judgmental terms have declined over time, while variation and communication terms have increased. The paper further notes that for shibboleths – prescriptive rules with high salience for “some readers” – a common formulation is that “some writers” or even “many writers” use the disapproved term, thus paralleling the “some readers” who notice the shibboleths.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Linguistic norms and conventions 1
- Usage guides and the Age of Prescriptivism 1
- “Splendidly prejudiced” 29
- Paradigm shifts in 19th-century British grammar writing 49
- Promotional conventions on English title-pages up to 1550 73
- What can we learn from constructed speech errors? 99
- The proverbial discourse tradition in the history of English 129
- Testing a stylometric tool in the study of Middle English documentary texts 149
- Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing 167
- Studying dialect spelling in its own right 191
- Index 213
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Linguistic norms and conventions 1
- Usage guides and the Age of Prescriptivism 1
- “Splendidly prejudiced” 29
- Paradigm shifts in 19th-century British grammar writing 49
- Promotional conventions on English title-pages up to 1550 73
- What can we learn from constructed speech errors? 99
- The proverbial discourse tradition in the history of English 129
- Testing a stylometric tool in the study of Middle English documentary texts 149
- Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing 167
- Studying dialect spelling in its own right 191
- Index 213
