Language Anxiety: Conflict and Change in the History of EnglishOUP Oxford, 29.01.2009 - 312 Seiten This book looks at the ever-present anxieties associated with language change. Focusing on English from Alfred the Great to the present, Tim Machan offers a fresh perspective on the history of language. He reveals amusing and sometimes disconcerting aspects of our linguistic and social behavior and suggests that anxiety about language has sometimes allowed us to avoid the issues we really find disturbing: when speakers of English worry over grammar, sounds, or words the real source of their anxiety is often not language at all but issues like immigration or social instability. Drawing on an array of evidence from archives, literature, history, polemics, and the press, as well as centuries of legislation, Tim Machan uncovers the perennial nature of concerns about the poverty and purity of English. There has never been a time, he shows, when we weren't worried about the corruption of language and its apparent connections with educational standards, the morality of youth, the integrity of society, and the identity of our nations. This is a fascinating story, told here in consummate fashion, combining insight and anecdote, and learning with wit - a book for everyone interested in languages and the people who speak them. |
Inhalt
| 1 | |
2 A Moveable Speech | 27 |
3 Narratives of Change | 81 |
4 Policy and Politics | 130 |
5 Say the Right Thing | 186 |
6 Fixing English | 238 |
Works Cited | 267 |
| 289 | |
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Language Anxiety: Conflict and Change in the History of English Tim William Machan Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2009 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
2nd edn African Anglophones anxiety bilingual British Cambridge University Press century change and variation Chaucer communication context creoles critics cultural David Crystal diachronic dialect Dictionary diglossia discussion distinction dominant England English Language Esperanto ethnic example extra-linguistic fact forms gender Germanic global grammar grammatical gender history of English human identity immigration indigenous individuals interlanguages issues John judgements kind language change language contact language planning Language Policy Language Revitalization language's Latin linguistic change linguistic variation Lollard London Maori medieval Menston metalinguistic Middle English multilingualism narrative Native Americans natural languages non-linguistic non-standard Old English Oxford University Press particular perhaps phonology political pronunciation Quoted regional variation Routledge significance simply social meanings sociolects sociolinguistic Spanglish speak speakers speech spoken Standard English standard language structural tion tradition translation United usage variation and change varieties of English Vernacular Vowel Shift warrior Webster Welsh words York Zealand