Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Attitudes and concerns in eighteenth-century English
- 2 Prescriptivism and the suppression of variation
- 3 Women's grammars
- 4 Eighteenth-century women and their norms of correctness
- 5 Lowth as an icon of prescriptivism
- 6 Queeney Thrale and the teaching of English grammar
- 7 Coalitions, networks, and discourse communities in Augustan England: The Spectator and the early eighteenth-century essay
- 8 Contextualising eighteenth-century politeness: social distinction and metaphorical levelling
- 9 Expressive speech acts and politeness in eighteenth-century English
- 10 Variation and change in eighteenth-century English
- 11 Variation in sentential complements in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English: a processing-based explanation
- 12 Nationality and standardisation in eighteenth-century Scotland
- 13 English in eighteenth-century Ireland
- 14 Changes and continuities in dialect grammar
- 15 ‘Be pleased to report expressly’: the development of a public style in Late Modern English business and official correspondence
- 16 Registering the language – dictionaries, diction and the art of elocution
- Timeline for the eighteenth century
- References
- Late modern English language studies
- Indexes
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Attitudes and concerns in eighteenth-century English
- 2 Prescriptivism and the suppression of variation
- 3 Women's grammars
- 4 Eighteenth-century women and their norms of correctness
- 5 Lowth as an icon of prescriptivism
- 6 Queeney Thrale and the teaching of English grammar
- 7 Coalitions, networks, and discourse communities in Augustan England: The Spectator and the early eighteenth-century essay
- 8 Contextualising eighteenth-century politeness: social distinction and metaphorical levelling
- 9 Expressive speech acts and politeness in eighteenth-century English
- 10 Variation and change in eighteenth-century English
- 11 Variation in sentential complements in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English: a processing-based explanation
- 12 Nationality and standardisation in eighteenth-century Scotland
- 13 English in eighteenth-century Ireland
- 14 Changes and continuities in dialect grammar
- 15 ‘Be pleased to report expressly’: the development of a public style in Late Modern English business and official correspondence
- 16 Registering the language – dictionaries, diction and the art of elocution
- Timeline for the eighteenth century
- References
- Late modern English language studies
- Indexes
Summary
In the past decade or so the study of English in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has established itself as an area of historical linguistics in its own right. This period has come to be known as Late Modern English and covers the period roughly from the reign of Queen Anne – the Augustan Age, that of Pope, Dryden and Swift – down to the end of the Victorian era at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is not a period of major categorial changes in English but of more subtle shifts in syntax and vocabulary and above all it is the time when pronunciation became a yardstick of acceptability in English society. The study of English in the late modern period is inextricably linked to the rise of prescriptivism, a phenomenon which has determined the attitudes to spoken language in present-day English society.
The validity of the late modern period has been underlined by a series of recent conferences which have taken place at the universities of Edinburgh, Vigo and Leiden. The range of topics dealt with at these conferences testifies to the interest of English scholars in the period. In particular the rise in grammar writing has been a focus, but also the spread of dictionaries and their use as authoritative works in language use.
The field of Late Modern English studies has been strengthened by a number of seminal publications in recent years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eighteenth-Century EnglishIdeology and Change, pp. xvii - xviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010