Standardization of the English Language
FR 14-16 Raum 23.21/02.22
Studiengang Magister: Hauptseminar Ältere Anglistik
Studiengang Master: Modul 1a Historische Sprachwissenschaft
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 / 1
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historical reference works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
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,
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 1stmeeting.
Additional Material
Attitudes towards English (18th c.) – page 1
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].
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 1
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.
- 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 1
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 jusnorma 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.
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.