Prescription and Tradition in Language

Establishing Standards across Time and Space

Edited by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Prof. Carol Percy

Publication date:

14 November 2016

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

234x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783096503

This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world and addresses questions such as how nationalistic idealisations of ‘traditional’ language persist (or shift) amid language change, linguistic variation and multilingualism. The volume explores issues of standardisation and the sociolinguistic phenomenon of prescription as a formative influence on the notional standard language as well as the interconnections between these in a wide range of geographical contexts. It balances the otherwise strong emphasis on English in English language publications on prescriptivism and breaks new ground with its multilingual approach across languages and nations. The book will appeal to scholars working within different linguistic traditions interested in questions relating to all aspects of standardisation and prescriptivism.

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction

1. Carol Percy and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Prescription and Tradition: Establishing Standards across Time and Space

Part 1: General and Theoretical

2. Dick Smakman and Sandra Nekesa Barasa: Defining “Standard”: Towards a Crosscultural Definition of the Language Norm

3. Florian Coulmas: Prescriptivism and Writing Systems

4. Henning Klöter: “What is Correct Chinese?” Revisited

5. Felix K. Ameka: The Uselessness of the Useful: Language Standardisation and Variation in Multilingual Contexts

6. Katja Lochtman: Prescriptivism and Sociolinguistic Competence in German as a Foreign Language

Part 2: Prescription and Tradition

7. Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Prescriptivism in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of France and England

8. Rita Queiroz de Barros: “A Higher Standard of Correctness than is Quite Desirable”: Linguistic Prescriptivism in Charles Dickens’ Journals

9. Gijsbert Rutten and Rik Vosters: Competing Language Norms in the Southern Low Countries (1815-1830)

10. Heimir van der Feest Viðarsson: The Syntax of Others: “Un-Icelandic” Verb Placement in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Icelandic

11. Dominik Banhold: School Grammars and Language Guides: Prescriptivism in the German Language Codex in the Early Twentieth Century

Part 3: Usage Guides: An English Tradition

12. Robin Straaijer: A Perspective on Prescriptivism: Language in Reviews of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage

13. Mark Kaunisto: Which Entries Need to be Standardised? Variation in the Choice of Entries in Usage Guides

14. Matthijs Smits: “Garnering” Respect? The Emergence of Authority in the American Usage Tradition

15. Don Chapman: Stalwarts, SNOOTs and Some Readers: How “Traditional Rules” are Traditional

Part 4: Re-defining Boundaries: Current Issues and Challenges

16. Martin Gill: “Goodbye, Sweet England”: Language, Nation and Normativity in Popular British News Media

17. Danielle Candel: Prescription and Tradition: From the French Dictionnaire de l’Académie to the Official French Language Enrichment Process (1996-2014)

18. Arto Mustajoki: Challenges in the Standardisation of Contemporary Russian

19. Loreta Vaicekauskienė: Language Regimentation as Soviet Inheritance: Joining Scholarship and State Ideology

20. Aleksandra Gjurkova: Prescription and Language Management in Macedonia

21. Pieter Duijff: The Standardisation Process of Frisian: A Word List as a Result

22. Miren Lourdes Oñederra: The Standardisation of Pronunciation: Basque Today, between Maintenance and Variation

23. Pam Peters: Epilogue: On Establishing the Standard Language – and Language Standards

Index

Long ignored by professional linguists, or dismissed as ‘unnatural’ or ‘artificial’, prescriptivism in language is in this volume the object of serious scientific investigation. This collection explores the vast range of sociolinguistic contexts for prescriptivism, and firmly demonstrates the important place for this research in general linguistics.