The Grammatical Margins of Class

doi:10.1017/9781108120470.010

10 - The Grammatical Margins of Class

from Part III - Norms and Margins: Moving into the Twenty-First Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2018

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade

Edited by

Valérie Kerfelec and

Linda Pillière: Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Univ, LERMA
Wilfrid Andrieu: Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Univ, LERMA
Valérie Kerfelec: Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Univ, LERMA
Diana Lewis: Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Univ, LERMA

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Summary

Usage guides for English, which first arose as a genre in England in 1770 and in America in 1847, are published in ever increasing numbers today. The year 2014 alone saw the publication of a new edition of Gowers’s Complete Plain Words (1954), a reissue as an e-book of David Crystal’s Who Cares about English Usage (2000) and a completely new usage guide by Steven Pinker. All three, moreover, will be published by Penguin alone. Other publishers also bring out new titles or reissue old ones. This chapter focuses on the rise and popularity of the usage guide from the earliest days onwards. The genre is defined following Weiner (1988), focussing at the same time on what characterises a usage problem. In particular, an important part of the discussion of usage problems by Weiner, i.e. what he terms “sociolinguistic considerations”, is analysed in order to discover how – in a British context – social class plays a role in the way in which particular forms or constructions become usage problems, now as well as in the past.

Type: Chapter
Information: Standardising English
Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language
, pp. 193 - 212

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108120470.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2018

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