Standardization of the English Language
FR 14-16 Raum 23.21/02.22
Studiengang Magister: Hauptseminar Ältere Anglistik
Studiengang Master: Modul 1a Historische Sprachwissenschaft
Date
Topic
Preparation
Pres
21.10.05
Introduction
28.10.05
Discussion of categories and terms:
What is a „Standard“, what are „varieties
(dialects, registers, styles)“
use any linguistic reference work
04.11.05
Discussion of categories and terms:
”(universal) grammar”, “dictionary”
use any linguistic reference work
11.11.05
Discussion of historical conditions:
The linguistic situation about 1600
use any language history
18.11.05
Describing the language:
The grammatical tradition to 1800
any language history, Michael,
Barber
3
25.11.05
Describing the language:
Spelling reforms to 1800
any language history, Scragg,
Barber
1
02.12.05
Describing the language:
The dictionary tradition to 1800
Any language history, Barber
3
09.12.05
Preparing the ground:
The desire for stability
get informed about the Civil war,
the Restoration, the Glorious
Revolution in Ploetz and similar
reference works
3
16.12.05
Preparing the ground:
”Uniform country, uniform language” –
the 18th century
Reader on 18th century
2
23.12.05
Preliminary results
use your notes
13.01.06
Discussing the language:
The Academy Problem
Reader on Dryden, Defoe, Swift;
Funke
20.01.06
Discussing the language:
Attitudes towards standard and varieties
Reader on attitudes
27.01.06
Discussing the language:
Language philosophy in the 18th c.
Reader on language philosophy
03.02.06
The Doctrine of Correctness:
The case of 1802
Reader on doctrine of correctness,
historical reference works
10.05.06
General discussion
use your notes
1
Groups of 2-4 students may contribute to the discussions in seminar by introducing all
participants to a topic and its most essential aspects; papers (or digital presentations) of at
most 15 minutes length should present these aspects in the form of theses which are shortly
explained, leaving any more specialized explanations to further discussion.
Those interested in preparing and introducing a topic should contact me early; they are
expected to discuss details of the presentation with me at least three times: when they have
acquired the necessary knowledge about the topic; when they have decided which theses they
are going to present, and which material to use; and a week before the presentation in
seminar, when they should have everything ready (for copy etc.). Presentations of this kind
are possible for the following dates and topics:
18.11.
Presentation of three grammars, from about 1660, 1720, and 1760, as
illustrations of the general characteristics of the development from 1600 to
1800 (max. three groups of two students each)
25.11.
Presentation of a spelling reform proposal to illustrate the general
characteristics of the proposals made in the 17th-18th centuries (1 group of 2
students)
02.12.
Presentation of three dictionaries, from about 1630, 1700, and 1755, as
illustrations of the general characteristics of the development from 1600 to
1800 (max. 3 groups of 2 students each)
09.12.
Presentations of the most essential issues and long-term results of the Civil
War, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution (max. 3 groups of 2 students
each)
16.12.
Presentation of those aspects of the 18th century culture which have a more or
less direct influence on the use of the language (max. 2 groups of 3-4 students
each)
13.01.
Introducing us to Swift’s Proposal (1 group of 2 students)
Reading list (including compulsory reading and further study proposals):
Barber, Charles. Early modern English. Revised edition. Edinburgh 1996.
Baugh, Albert Croll and Thomas Cable. A history of the English language. 4th ed. London
1993.
Bex, Tony and Richard Watts (eds). Standard English: the widening debate. London 1999.
Cable, Thomas. "Rise of Written Standard English," in Aldo Scaglione and Max L. Baeumer
(eds.), The Emergence of National Languages, Ravenna 1984.
32: rom b110/s278
Crowley, Tony. The politics of discourse: the standard language question in British cultural
debates. London 1989.
UB ang g100.c953
-----. Proper English? Readings in Language, History and Cultural Identity. London 1991.
UB ang g100.c953
-----. Standard English and the Politics of Language. London 2003
UB ang g073.c953
Crystal, David. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. 2nd ed. repr.
Cambridge 2005.
Fisher, John H. The Emergence of Standard English. Lexington 1996.
Hayashi, Tetsuro. The Theory of English Lexicography 1530–1791. Studies in the History of
the Language Sciences 18. Amsterdam 1978.
Leonard, Sterling Andrus. The Doctrine of Correctness in English usage, 1700-1800.
Madison 1929 [repr. New York 1962].
Lynch, Jack and Anne McDermott (eds.). Anniversary Essays on Johnson's Dictionary.
Cambridge 2005.
Michael, Ian. English grammatical categories and the tradition to 1800. Cambridge 1970.
-----. The teaching of English : from the sixteenth century to 1870. Cambridge 1987.
Milroy, James and Leslie Milroy. Authority in Language: Investigating language prescription
and standardisation. London 1983 [chapter "Standard English and the complaint
tradition”]
Mugglestone, Lynda. Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford 1997.
Reddick, A. 1990. The making of Johnson´s dictionary 1746-1773. Cambridge University
Press 1990.
Scragg, Donald G. A History of English Spelling. Manchester University Press 1974
[see also, for modern proposals and discussion,
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/index.html]
Shaklee, Margaret. "The Rise of Standard English," pp. 33-62 in Thimothey Shopen and
Joseph M. Williams (eds.), Standards and Dialects in English, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
Smith, Olivia. The Politics of Language 1791-1819. Oxford 1984.
Starnes, De Witt T. and Gertrude E. Noyes. The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson
1604–1755. With an introductory article and a bibliography byGabriele Stein. Studies in
the History of the Language Sciences 57. Amsterdam 1991 [originally published 1946].
Reader with texts relating to special topics available at 1st meeting.
Additional Material
Attitudes towards English (18th c.) – page 5
The best Expressions grow low and degenrate, when profan'd by the
populace, and applied to mean things. The use they make of them, infecting
them with a mean and abject Idea, causes that we cannot use them without
sullying and defiling those things, which are signified by them. But it is no
hard matter to discern between the depraved Language of common People,
and the noble and refin'd expressions of the Gentry, whose condition and
merits have advanced them above the other [Art of Speaking 1708].
'Tis a phrase often apply'd to a man, when speaking, that he speaks his
MIND; as much as to say, that his Speech or Discourse is a publishing of
some Energie or Motion of his Soul. The VULGAR merged in Sense from
their earliest infancy, and never once dreaming any thing to be worthy of
pursuit, but what pampers their Appetite, or fills their Purse, imagine
nothing to be real, but what may be tasted, or touched [Harris, Hermes: or a
Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar
1751].
Nor are all the words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented
as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction
is in great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for
some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times
and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is
always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the
durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish
with other things unworthy of preservation [Johnson, Preface Dictionary
1755].
No absolute monarch hath it more in his power to nobilitate a person of
obscure birth, than it is in the power of good use to ennoble words of low or
dubious extraction; such, for instance, as have either arisen, nobody knows
how, like fib [Schwindel, inf.], banter [Geplänkel], bigot [Eiferer], fop
[Stutzer], flippant [leichtfertig, schnoddrig], among the rabble [Pöbel], or
like flimsy [dürftig, fadenscheinig], sprung from the cant [Jargon] of the
manufacturers [Campbell Philosophy of Rhetoric 1776].
My Animadversions will extend to such Phrases only as People in decent
Life inadvertently adopt ... Puritty and Politeness of Expression ... is the
only external Distinction which remains between a gentleman and a valet; a
lady and a Mantua-maker [Withers, Aristarchus 1788].
Attitudes towards English (18th c.) – page 6
One branch of learning, however, I went to the bottom with, and that the
most essential branch too, the grammar of my mother tongue. I had
experienced the want of a knowledge of grammar during my stay with Mr
Holland; but it is very probable that I never should have thought of
encountering the study of it, had not accident placed me under a man whose
friendship extended beyond his interest. Writing a fair hand procured me the
honour of being copyist to Colonel Debeig, the commandant of the
garrison...
Being totally ignorant of the rules of grammar, I necessarily made many
mistakes in copying, because no one can copy letter by letter, nor even word
by word. The colonel saw my deficiency, and strongly recommended study.
He enforced his advice with a sort of injunction, and with a promise of
reward in case of success.
I procured me a Lowth's grammar, and applied myself to the study of it with
unceasing assiduity, and not without some profit; for, though it was a
considerable time before I fully comprehended all that I read, still I read and
studied with such unremitted attention, that, at last, I could write without
falling into any very gross errors. The pains I took cannot be described: I
wrote the whole grammar out two or three times; I got it by heart; I repeated
it every morning and every evening, and, when on guard, I imposed on
myself the task of saying it all over once every time I was posted sentinel.
To this exercise of my memory I ascribe the retentiveness of which I have
since found it capable, and to the success with which it was attended, I
ascribe the perseverance that has led to the acquirement of the little learning
of which I am the master [Cobbett, Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine
1796; P.P. was his pseudonym]
The present project ... is to communicate to all uneducated Reformers, a
knowledge of Grammar. The people, you know, were accused of presenting
petitions not grammatically correct. And those petitions were rejected, the
petitioners being 'ignorant'; though some of them were afterwards put into
prison, for being 'better informed' ... No doubt remains in my mind, that
there was more talent discovered, and more political knowledge, by the
leaders amongst the Reformers, than have ever been shown, at any period of
time, by the Members of the two houses of parliament.
There was only one thing in which any of you were deficient, and that was
in the mere art of so arranging the words in your Resolutions and Petitions
as to make these compositions what is called grammatically correct. Hence,
men of a hundredth part of the mind of some of the authors of the Petitions
were enabled to cavil at them on this account, and to infer from this
incorrectness, that the Petitioners were a set of ignorant creatures, who knew
nothing of what they were talking; a set of the 'Lower Classes', who ought
never to raise their reading above that of children's books, Christmas
Carrols, and the like [Cobbett, Political Register 29 Nov 1817].
HS Standardization: Language philosophy and class – page 7
Hans Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England 1780-1860, London 1983
[p. 14] Universal grammar was the first [...] to postulate a connection
between language and thought. It was based on the simple consideration
that if discourse is the image of thought and if thought is subject to the
laws of reason, then discourse itself must reveal and illustrate the laws of
reason. This view was summed up in the popular and suggestive metaphor
which said that language or speech is a painting or a copy of the mind -"la
parole est une [p. 15] peinture de l'esprit." The original being the same to
all people regardless of the language they speak, it follows that their
individual copies must of necessity reproduce the same form or structure of
this original, though the colors, the actual words and expressions, may
differ. Thus this kind of grammar is universal; it comprises all the general
principles which no particular grammar can fail to illustrate. These
principles were set forth in Claude Lancelot's and Antoine Arnauld's
Grammaire générale et raisonnée, known also as L'art de parler or the
Port-Royal Grammar, which soon after its appearance in 1660 gained an
authority which through numerous reissues lasted for more than a hundred
years, aided by the even greater fame of its companion piece La logique,
ou l'art de penser, which first appeared in 1662.
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language is a rational structure, governed by reason (its grammar
should therefore also be reasonable and clear)
language testifies to the progress of the human mind (as opposed to
non-human minds)
language is hard to attain, and meaningful articulation is found in
man alone
thinking and thoughts are impossible without language (Monboddo's
orang-outang example)
speech is an image of your mind
like language, it should be governed by reason and perspicuity
only if your speech conforms to the logical structure of language is
it "reasonable"
18th-c. representatives:
James Harris, Hermes, or a philosophical enquiry concerning language and
universal grammar (1751)
Daniel Farro, The Royal Universal British Grammar and vocabulary (1754)
Bayly, An Introduction literary and philosophical to Languages (1756)
James Elphinston, The Principles of the English Language digested (1765)
James Burnett (Lord Monboddo), Of the Origin and Progress of Language
(1774)
Beattie, Dissertations moral & critical (1783); part 3 repr. as The Theory of
Language (1788)
John Horne Tooke, The Diversions of Purley (1786 and 1798)
HS Standardization: Language philosophy and class – page 8
John Walker, A Critical pronouncing dictionary (1791), repr. in Crowley Proper
English pp. 94-110 (bold face mine)
[p. 102] But what is this custom to which we must so implicitly submit? Is it
the usage of the greater part of the speakers, whether good or bad? This has
never been asserted by the most sanguine abbettors of its authority. Is it the
majority of the studious in schools and colleges, with those of the learned
professions, or of those who, from their elevated birth or station, give
laws to the refinements and elegancies of a court? To confine propriety to
the latter, which is too often the case, seems an injury to the former; who,
from their very profession, appear to have a natural right to a share, at least,
in the legislation of language, if not to an absolute sovereignty. The polished
attendants [p. 103] on a throne are as apt to depart from simplicity in
language as in dress and manners; and novelty, instead of custom, is too
often the jus norma loquendi of a court.
Perhaps an attentive observation will lead us to conclude, that the usage,
which ought to direct us, is neither of these we have been enumerating,
taken singly, but a sort of compound ratio of all three. Neither a finical
pronunciation of the court, nor a pedantic Graecism of the schools, will be
denominated respectable usage, till a certain number of the general mass
of speakers have acknowledged them; nor will a multitude of common
speakers authorise any pronunciation which is reprobated by the learned
and polite.
As those sounds, therefore, which are most generally received among the
learned and polite, as well as the bulk of speakers, are the most
legitimate, we may conclude that a majority of two of these states ought
always to occur, in order to constitute what is called good usage.
HS Standardization: Language philosophy and class – page 9
John Walker, A Critical pronouncing dictionary (1791), repr. in Crowley Proper
English pp. 94-110 (bold face mine)
[p. 108] Thus I have endeavoured to correct some of the more glaring errors
of my countrymen [i.e. Londoners]; who, with all their faults, are still upon
the whole the best pronouncers of the English language. For though the
pronunciation of London is certainly erroneous in many words, yet, upon
being compared with that of any other place, it is undoubtedly the best; that
is, not only the best by courtesy, and because it happens to be the
pronunciation of the capital, but best by a better title; that of being more
generally received: or, in other words, though the people of London are
erroneous in the pronunciation of many words, the inhabitants of every
other place are erroneous in many more. Nay, harsh as the sentence may
seem, those at considerable distance from the capital do not only
mispronounce many words taken separately, but they scarcely pronounce
with purity a single word, syllable, or letter. Thus, if the short sound of the
letter u in trunk, sunk, &c. differ from the sound of that letter in the northern
parts of England, where they sound it like the u in bull, and nearly as if the
words were written troonk, soonk, &c. it necessarily follows that every word
where the letter occurs must by those provincials be mispronounced. [...]
[p. 109] But though the inhabitants of London have this manifest advantage
over all the other inhabitants of the island, they have the disadvantage of
being more disgraced by their peculiarities than any other people. The
grand difference between the metropolis and the provinces is, that people of
education in London are free from all the vices of the vulgar; but the best
educated people in the provinces, if constantly resident there, are sure to be
strongly tinctured with the dialect of the country in which they live. Hence it
is that the vulgar pronunciation of London, though not half so erroneous as
that of Scotland, Ireland, or any of the provinces, is, to a person of correct
taste, a thousand times more offensive and disgusting.
HS Standardization: Dropping one's 'h's
The joke is, of course, in the pronunciation of "whole"; do you get it?
Punch Library of Humour 137: Says a doctor: "I can tell what you're
suffering from, my good fellow! You're suffering from acne!" "Ackney?"
replies the patient. "I only wish I'd never been near the place!"
'ackney = Hackney, suburb of London's East End
HS Standardization: Additional reading
Bibliography of a few publications relevant to the study of
standardizing the language in the 18th century
Baron, Dennis. Grammar and Gender. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.
Batsleer, Janet, and Tony Davies, Rebecca O'Rourke, and Chris Weedon.
Rewriting English: Cultural Politics of Gender and Class. NY:
Methuen, 1985.
Bennett, John. Strictures on Female Education; Chiefly as it Relates to the
Culture of the Heart. 1795. Rpt. NY: Source Book, 1971.
Chesterfield, Lord. Elements of a Polite Education, Carefully selected from
the Letters of the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope,
Earl of Chesterfield. By George Gregory. Boston, 1801.
Cohen, Murray. Sensible Words: Linguistic Practice in England, 16401785. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1977.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. New Haven: Yale,
1992.
Corfield, P.J. The Impact of English Towns 1700-1800. Oxford, 1982.
Court, Franklin E. Institutionalizing English Literature: The Culture and
Politics of Literary Study, 1750-1900. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.
Crowley, Tony. Standard English and the Politics of Language. Urbana and
Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1989.
Hunter, Jean E. "The Eighteenth-Century Englishwoman: According to The
Gentleman's Magazine" in Women in the Eighteenth Century and
Other Essays. Eds. Paul Fritz and Richard Morton. Toronto and
Sarasota: Hakkert & Co., 1976: 73-88.
Joseph, John Earl. Eloquence and Power: The Rise of Language Standards
and Standard Languages. London: Francis Pinter, 1987
Langford, Paul. A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783.
Oxford: Clarenden, 1989.
Michaels, Ian. The Teaching of English from the Sixteenth Century to 1870.
London: Cambridge, 1987.
Philpot, Stephen. An Essay on the Advantages of a Polite Education Joined
with a Learned One. London, 1747.
Reeve, Clara. Plans of Education, with Remarks on the Systems of Other
Writers. 1792. Rpt. NY: Garland, 1974.
Reynolds, Myra. The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760. NY: Houghton
Mifflin, 1920.
Smith, Olivia. The Politics of Language, 1791-1819. Oxford: Clarenden UP,
1984.
Tucker, Susie, ed. English Examined: Two Centuries of Comment on the
Mother Tongue. London: Cambridge, 1961.
HS Standardization: Additional reading
West, Jane. The Advantages of Education. 1793. Rpt. NY: Garland, 1974.
Internet resources
Carole Meyer, Introduction: "Language is the Dress of Thought": Style and
Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. [dissertation]
http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu/cfm/academic/Intro.html
Restoration & 18th Century [Voice of the Shuttle, all aspects from art to
zoology]
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2738