Out in Left Field': Spelling Reformers of the Eighteenth Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Cambridge History of the English Language: Vol. III--1476 to 1776
Journal of English Linguistics, 2001
The third of the four chronological volumes in the six-volume Cambridge History of the English Language (CHEL) covers roughly three centuries of linguistic history, from the introduction of printing in England by William Caxton to the American Declaration of Independence. This is the first period in the history of English for which both manuscript and printed records exist, it is the first period of intense scholarly interest in the state of the language, and it is also the first period for which we have abundant contemporary testimony regarding linguistic issues. CHEL III includes a general editor's "Preface" by Richard Hogg (xi-xv); an "Introduction" by the volume's editor, Roger Lass (1-9); and chapters on "Orthography and Punctuation" by Vivian Salmon (13-55), "Phonology and Morphology" by Roger Lass (56-186), "Syntax" by Matti Rissanen (187-331), "Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics" by Terttu Nevalainen (332-458), "Regional and Social Variation" by Manfred Görlach (459-538), "Literary Language" by Sylvia Adamson (539-653), a glossary of linguistic terms (654-69), individual bibliographies for each chapter, and an extensive index. As in the previous CHEL volumes, most chapters can stand alone as separate monographs. The individual contributions are unified chronologically but not theoretically; the only shared theoretical approach is the sensible attempt to avoid paradigm-specific formalisms. "Orthography and Punctuation" by Vivian Salmon is an informative and well-structured survey of the cultural circumstances, debates, and choices that changed English orthography from the medieval, rather chaotic, and localized scribal practices to essentially the modern set of conventions. It was during Early Modern English that multiple new punctuation marks were introduced and that most of the rules in force today were devised and enriched. The chapter separates the influence of printers and printed books from the impact of the learned orthoepic discourse in the formation of spelling patterns, with Mulcaster's 1582 Elementarie as the major divide between the premodern and the modern state of affairs. The eight decades from 1582 to the 1660 Restoration emerge as the most significant forma
An Alternative Spelling for English: Contemporary Approaches and Simplification Criteria
JEZIK, KNJIŽEVNOST, ALTERNATIVE/LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, ALTERNATIVES - Jezička istraživanja
The history of English spelling is characterised by periods of discontinuity and a slow and relentless shift from a phonemic orthography to a morphophonemic system. There have been two periods when spelling reform of the English language has attracted particular interest: the first was from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, when a number of publications and dictionaries outlining proposals for reform were published; the second was between the 18th and early 20th centuries and linked to the development of phonetics as a science. For example, Noah Webster’s dictionary included an essay on the oddities of modern orthography and his proposals for reform (some of which would become hallmarks of American English spelling). The purpose of this study is to review proposals for English-language spelling reform since the 1950s – New Spelling, Regularised English, Spelling Reform 1, Cut Spelling, Shavian, Interspel, and the Petersonian English Alphabet – to identify the...
Late eighteenth-century English orthoepic dictionary front matter
Lexicography, 2020
Authors of late eighteenth-century English dictionaries provided instruction in their front matter on how to use these reference works; how the language which they advocated for was superior to that in other dictionaries; and how users from regions outside of London could use dictionaries as self-help aids. The two authors discussed, James Buchanan and Thomas Sheridan, represent a group of lexicographers who attempted to impose structure on English to fix "problems" in pronunciation and writing. The authors of these dictionaries used their texts to assist readers in applying their methods to reduce unacceptable accents and improve understanding by others. These texts show that the English of England was prioritized by authors who were ministers, schoolmasters, and orators; that is, they were experts in their fields and were known specifically by their backgrounds and ideologies. That situation, however, is different from the anonymization and implicit politicization of online dictionaries today that neither name their writers nor obviously express editorial principles. Readers have become so accepting of what they read in online dictionaries that they do not question the validity of the information or from whence come senses and definitions, thus showing that there is an essential need for additional media literacy.
Transactions of the Philological Society, 2005
William Baillie invented his own spelling system, which is used in six of his letters of the 1830s and 1840s. Among his practices are his use of 'voiced' consonant letters such as 'd' for both voiced and voiceless consonants such as [t] and [d], doubling of word-medial consonants, and respelling and addition of diacritics to vowels. A forced recluse considered to have a mental infirmity brought on by his residency in Bombay and Baghdad, Baillie's practice shows an intelligent attempt to understand the relation between spelling and sound, perhaps inspired by his knowledge of Persian and Arabic, and possibly showing a knowledge of the spelling system proposed by James Elphinston.
Eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries: reflecting usage or setting their own standard?
The emergence, in the eighteenth century, of increasingly rigid prescriptions for spoken English, resulted in part from the process of “enregisterment” of a variety of the language (Agha 2003). The usage-based prescriptivism conveyed in pronouncing dictionaries, which were explicitly intended to represent the language of the upper classes, was both a vector for this process, and a consequence of it. Yet the authors of these works were overwhelmingly outsiders: the first section of this paper shows that throughout the century, the majority of orthoepists were religiously, culturally, politically and/or socially at the margins of the world whose speech they sought to describe and emulate; their “marginality” seems in fact to have been an asset (Elliott 2003). However, orthoepist-lexicographers did not follow only the principle of “authoritarianism” (Pullum 2004:7). In many ways, orthoepists did reinforce a socially established norm, but they also evaluated possible pronunciations according to more arbitrary and subjective criteria, subscribing to an abstract ideal of language. In the second section of the paper, I inventory and classify the specific motivations and justifications (referring back to the categories proposed by Pullum, i.e., “nostalgia”, “aestheticism”, “functionalism”, etc.) presented in the metadiscourse of four dictionaries: James Buchanan’s Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronunciatio (1757), William Kenrick’s New Dictionary of the English Language, Thomas Sheridan's General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) and John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791). By contributing to the myth of an absolute, feeding into “ideologies of correctness” (Mugglestone 2010:329), the orthoepists ultimately helped create an artificial norm for English, determined by subjective criteria distinct from class and geographical origin.
Journal of English Linguistics, 2001
The third of the four chronological volumes in the six-volume Cambridge History of the English Language (CHEL) covers roughly three centuries of linguistic history, from the introduction of printing in England by William Caxton to the American Declaration of Independence. This is the first period in the history of English for which both manuscript and printed records exist, it is the first period of intense scholarly interest in the state of the language, and it is also the first period for which we have abundant contemporary testimony regarding linguistic issues. CHEL III includes a general editor's "Preface" by Richard Hogg (xi-xv); an "Introduction" by the volume's editor, Roger Lass (1-9); and chapters on "Orthography and Punctuation" by Vivian Salmon (13-55), "Phonology and Morphology" by Roger Lass (56-186), "Syntax" by Matti Rissanen (187-331), "Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics" by Terttu Nevalainen (332-458), "Regional and Social Variation" by Manfred Görlach (459-538), "Literary Language" by Sylvia Adamson (539-653), a glossary of linguistic terms (654-69), individual bibliographies for each chapter, and an extensive index. As in the previous CHEL volumes, most chapters can stand alone as separate monographs. The individual contributions are unified chronologically but not theoretically; the only shared theoretical approach is the sensible attempt to avoid paradigm-specific formalisms. "Orthography and Punctuation" by Vivian Salmon is an informative and well-structured survey of the cultural circumstances, debates, and choices that changed English orthography from the medieval, rather chaotic, and localized scribal practices to essentially the modern set of conventions. It was during Early Modern English that multiple new punctuation marks were introduced and that most of the rules in force today were devised and enriched. The chapter separates the influence of printers and printed books from the impact of the learned orthoepic discourse in the formation of spelling patterns, with Mulcaster's 1582 Elementarie as the major divide between the premodern and the modern state of affairs. The eight decades from 1582 to the 1660 Restoration emerge as the most significant forma
A radical plan for the English language : Thomas Spence’s “New Alphabet
Miranda, 2016
This article discusses Thomas Spence's scheme of reformed spelling and its place within Spence's broader plan for the reform of society. Whilst earlier commentators on and biographers of Spence tended to dismiss his ideas on language as trivial or even misguided, more recent scholarship recognises the interconnection of language and politics in Spence's radical plan. This article sets Spence's linguistic ideas within the context of 18 th -century prescriptivism and standardisation of language, arguing that, although Spence is prescriptive in advocating the adoption of "correct" pronunciation, his plans for spelling reform are in direct opposition to the prevailing trends of the time. Spence's ideas on spelling reform both hark back to those of 16 th -century reformers (e.g. Hart), and anticipate 20 th -century schemes such as the Initial Teaching Alphabet, but his scheme for implementing them is unique. Finally, the article resumes its discussion of the interconnectedness of language and politics, setting Spence's ideas alongside those of later scholars and activists such as Cobbett and Foucault.