Chapter 13: ‘Our blood, our language, our institutions’
1. Thomas Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, with the Inaugural Lecture, 7th edn (London: Longmans & Green, 1885), 23–4.
2. John Mitchell Kemble, The Saxons in England, rev. Walter de Gray Birch (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1876), I, v.
3. J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People (London: Macmillan, 1874), 1.
4. Thomas R. Lounsbury, The Standard of Usage in English (New York: Harper, 1908), 4, 58–9.
5. I have taken these examples from William A. Craigie’s The Critique of Pure English: From Caxton to Smollett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946).
6. Claude Hagège, On the Death and Life of Languages, trans. Jody Gladding (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 104.
7. Antony Beevor, Stalingrad (New York: Penguin, 1999), 117.
Chapter 14: Organizing the Victorian treasure-house
1. Henry Butter, What’s the Harm of Fornication? (London: G. Berger, 1864), 10–11.
2. Henry Alford, A Plea for the Queen’s English, 2nd edn (London: Strahan, 1864), 6.
3. Ibid., 154.
4. George Washington Moon, The Bad English of Lindley Murray and Other Writers on the English Language, 3rd edn (London: Hatchard, 1869), 2.
5. George Washington Moon, A Defence of the Queen’s English (London: Hatchard, 1863), 5.
6. This statistic comes from Peter Burke and Roy Porter (eds), Language, Self, and Society: A Social History of Language (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 159.
7. Enquire Within Upon Everything, 27th edn (London: Houlston & Wright, 1865), 53.
8. Ibid., 54–61.
9. Ibid., 71.
10. Charles William Smith, Mind Your H’s and Take Care of Your R’s (London: Lockwood, 1866), 3, 29.
11. Alfred Leach, The Letter H: Past, Present, and Future (London: Griffith & Farran, 1880), 16.
12. Ibid., 11.
13. Quoted in Mugglestone, Talking Proper, 60.
14. Quoted in Görlach, Explorations in English Historical Linguistics, 191.
15. Alexander J. Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation (London: Trübner, 1869–89), I, 17, 19.
16. Ibid., I, 157.
17. Ibid., I, 155, n.
18. Anon., Never Too Late to Learn: Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking, Writing, and Pronunciation, Corrected (London: John Farquhar Shaw, 1855), 17, 54.
19. Edward S. Gould, Good English; or, Popular Errors in Language (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1867), 115, 130, 135.
20. Ibid., 32–4, 89.
21. Richard Grant White, Words and Their Uses, Past and Present (New York: Sheldon, 1871), 183, 192, 295, 297–8.
22. Ibid., 207, 211, 216.
23. Richard Grant White, Every-Day English (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1880), 411.
24. Alfred Ayres, The Verbalist: A Manual Devoted to Brief Discussions of the Right and Wrong Use of Words (New York: Appleton, 1882), 128, 220.
25. Letters, The Times, 14 February 1872.
26. Görlach, English in Nineteenth-Century England, 118–25.
27. J. A. H. Murray, ‘General Explanations’, in W. F. Bolton and David Crystal (eds), The English Language: Essays by Linguists and Men of Letters 1858–1964 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 59.
28. This is discussed at length in Charlotte Brewer’s essay ‘OED Sources’, in Lynda Mugglestone (ed.), Lexicography and the OED (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 40–58.
Chapter 15: The warden of English
1. Quoted in Jenny McMorris, The Warden of English: The Life of H. W. Fowler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 216.
2. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, ed. David Crystal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 728.
3. Ibid., 422, 112, 444, 239, 333, 513.
4. Ibid., 558–61.
5. Ibid., 210.
6. Ibid., 204, 439, 511.
7. William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th edn (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000), 71.
8. Ibid., 212.
9. Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1947), 103–5, 173.
10. Quoted in Jim Quinn, American Tongue and Cheek: A Populist Guide to Our Language (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 43–4.
11. Cody’s career is examined in detail in Edwin L. Battistella, Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody’s Famous Language School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Chapter 16: ‘Speak that I may see thee’
1. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 307.
2. Clive Upton, ‘Modern Regional English in the British Isles’, in Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford History of English, 330.
3. The findings are presented in William Labov, Sociolinguistic Patterns (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972).
4. Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air (London: Vintage, 1993), 235.
5. Edward Finegan, ‘English in North America’, in Richard Hogg and David Denison (eds), A History of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 386–7.
6. George Bernard Shaw, On Language, ed. Abraham Tauber (London: Peter Owen, 1965), 47.
7. Thomas R. Lounsbury, The Standard of Pronunciation in English (New York: Harper, 1904), 12–20.
8. William Henry P. Phyfe, How Should I Pronounce? (New York: Putnam, 1885), 5.
9. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London: Richard Field, 1589), 120–21.
10. Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 204–5.
11. A full study of London’s expansion at this time can be found in A. L. Beier and Roger Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis (London: Longman, 1986).
12. Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, ed. Ralph S. Walker (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1953), 41–2, 45–6.
13. Greenwood, An Essay Towards a Practical English Grammar, 309–10.
14. Crystal, The Stories of English, 406.
15. Mugglestone, Talking Proper, 46.
16. James Buchanan, An Essay towards Establishing a Standard for an Elegant and Uniform Pronunciation of the English Language (London: E. & C. Dilly, 1766), xi–xii.
17. William Enfield, The Speaker (London: Joseph Johnson, 1774), vii–xxiv.
18. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, The Female Speaker (London: Joseph Johnson, 1811), v.
19. John Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, xiv.
Chapter 17: Talking proper
1. John Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas, The Guide Unto Tongues (London: John Browne, 1617), 80.
2. John Ray, A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used (London: H. Bruges, 1674), 50, 74.
3. These examples are borrowed from Peter Trudgill and J. K. Chambers (eds), Dialects of English: Studies in Grammatical Variation (London: Longman, 1991).
4. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 1999), 21.
5. George Sampson, English for the English: A Chapter on National Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), 40–41, 48.
6. Henry Sweet, The Indispensable Foundation: A Selection from the Writings of Henry Sweet, ed. Eugénie J. A. Henderson (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 14.
7. Quoted in Tony Crowley, Proper English? Readings in Language, History and Cultural Identity (London: Routledge, 1991), 212, 214.
8. George Orwell, Essays, ed. John Carey (London: Everyman, 2002), 608, 611, 629, 634–6.
9. See Milroy and Milroy, Authority in Language, 116–130.
10. This subject is discussed at length in John Honey, Does Accent Matter? (London: Faber, 1989), and also in Honey’s essay ‘Talking Proper’, in Graham Nixon and John Honey (eds), An Historic Tongue: Studies in English Linguistics in Memory of Barbara Strang (London: Routledge, 1988).
11. Mugglestone, Talking Proper, 269.
12. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd edn (O
xford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34.
13. Crystal, The Stories of English, 368.
14. Anne Karpf, The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 2–4.
Chapter 18: The Alphabet and the Goddess
1. Kirsty Scott, ‘Sounds incredible’, Guardian, 10 July 2007.
2. Mark Wignall, ‘Bad Times for a Good Relationship’, Jamaica Observer, 4 April 2010.
3. John McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (London: William Heinemann, 2004), 3.
4. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982), 125–38.
5. The key ideas here come from Ong, Orality and Literacy, 31–77.
6. A fuller discussion of these issues can be found in Robert Pattison, On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
7. Andrea A. Lunsford, Writing Matters: Rhetoric in Public and Private Lives (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007), xi–xii.
8. Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (London: Allen Lane, 1998), 1, 7.
9. Quoted in Linda C. Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 142.
10. See Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (eds), The Ideology of Conduct (New York: Methuen, 1987), 8–9.
11. Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain (New York: Morgan Road, 2006), 14, 36.
12. Mark Liberman examines Brizendine’s statements in detail in his article ‘Neuroscience in the Service of Sexual Stereotypes’, which appears on the Language Log website: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003419.html, retrieved 22 March 2010.
13. Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, Language and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 9.
14. See Pinker, The Language Instinct, 429.
15. Judith Tingley, Genderflex: Men and Women Speaking Each Other’s Language at Work (New York: Amacom, 1994), 27.
16. Deborah Tannen, ‘The Relativity of Linguistic Strategies: Rethinking Power and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance’, in Deborah Cameron (ed.), The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1998), 269–70.
17. The subject is dealt with at some length in John Willinsky, After Literacy (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 171–84.
18. Ann Fisher, A New Grammar: Being the Most Easy Guide to Speaking and Writing the English Language Properly and Correctly, 2nd edn (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: I. Thompson, 1750), 117.
19. White, Every-Day English, 416.
Chapter 19: Modern life is rubbish
1. John Simon, Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and its Decline (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981), x–xiv.
2. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), 136.
3. H. G. Wells, Anticipations and Other Papers (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924), 204.
4. Wells, Mankind in the Making, 127–8.
5. Ibid., 132–3, 137.
6. W. Terrence Gordon, C. K. Ogden: A Bio-bibliographic Study (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990), 47.
7. Edward Finegan, ‘Usage’, in Richard Hogg (gen. ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992–2001), VI, 399.
8. Quoted in Edward Finegan, Attitudes Toward English Usage (New York: Teachers College Press, 1980), 121.
9. Herbert C. Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 173, 182.
10. Simon, Paradigms Lost, xv.
11. Ibid., 157.
12. Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, 219.
13. Geoffrey Hughes, Political Correctness (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 3.
14. Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint (London: Harvill, 1994), 4, 6, 12.
15. Ibid., 20, 21.
16. Cameron, Verbal Hygiene, 165.
Chapter 20: Unholy shit
1. Geoffrey Hughes, Swearing (London: Penguin, 1998), 243.
2. Geoffrey Hughes, An Encyclopedia of Swearing (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 65.
3. Quoted in Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 171.
4. Hughes, An Encyclopedia of Swearing, 372.
5. Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (London: Penguin, 2008), 331–3.
6. Jesse Sheidlower (ed.), The F-Word, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), xxii–xxxii.
7. Ibid., xxvii.
8. Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, 370.
9. Quoted in Lynda Mugglestone, Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 84.
10. Quoted in Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott and Cara Louise Buckley (eds), It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era (New York: Routledge, 2008), 128.
11. Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, 236.
12. Simon Critchley, On Humour (London: Routledge, 2002), 87.
13. Maureen Dowd, ‘Liberties; Niggardly City’, New York Times, 31 January 1999.
14. Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language (New York: Random House, 2009), 135.
15. Quoted in Charlotte Brewer, Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 96.
16. Quoted in Robert Burchfield, ‘Dictionaries and Ethnic Sensibilities’, in Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks (eds), The State of the Language (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 19.
Chapter 21: ‘It’s English-Only here’
1. Quoted in James Crawford (ed.), Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English Controversy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 85.
2. Jeremy J. Smith, ‘Scots’, in Glanville Price (ed.), Languages in Britain & Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 165.
3. Dick Leith, A Social History of English, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1997), 169–70.
4. Wells, Mankind in the Making, 209, n.
5. The rise of the ‘metropolitan malcontents’ is dealt with in Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia (London: Fourth Estate, 2009), 63–95.
6. Deborah J. Schildkraut, Press One for English: Language Policy, Public Opinion, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 2.
7. MALDEF policy statement. http://maldef.org/education/public_policy/, retrieved 18 March 2010.
8. Brent Staples, ‘The Last Train from Oakland’, New York Times, 24 January 1997.
9. Marcyliena Morgan, ‘More than a Mood or an Attitude: Discourse and Verbal Genres in African-American Culture’, in Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey and John Baugh (eds), African-American English: Structure, History, and Use (London: Routledge, 1998), 251.
10. Quoted in Hughes, Political Correctness, 120.
11. Ibid., 150.
12. A number of these examples come from Alice Morton Ball, The Compounding and Hyphenation of English Words (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1951).
13. Charles McGrath, ‘Death-Knell. Or Death Knell’, New York Times, 7 October 2007.
Chapter 22: The comma flaps its wings
1. Simon, Paradigms Lost, 8.
2. Victoria Moore, ‘Apostrophe catastrophe!’, Daily Mail, 18 November 2008.
3. Joseph Robertson, An Essay on Punctuation (London: J. Walter, 1785), Preface.
4. Walter Nash, English Usage: A Guide to First Principles (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 107.
5. Quoted in Nash, English Usage, 116.
6. Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (London: Profile, 2003), 1, 28, 30, 201.
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