Shakespeare Wrote ‘Between You and I’: Changing Perspectives on Authority and Language (original) (raw)

Abstract

Shakespeare wrote ‘Between You and I’: Changing perspectives on authority and language use The public’s concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of “the complaint tradition” (cf. Milroy and Milroy 2002:Ch.2). From the eighteenth century onwards (Percy 2009), the print media have featured letters to the editor on questions of language use, such as double negation, the split infinitive, dangling participles, etc. Although topics regarding language use keep recurring in the complaint tradition, the authors’ argumentation strategies change gradually. Opinions about what makes a certain usage item acceptable or unacceptable are usually supported by authorities, be it renowned authors, such as Shakespeare, grammar books, usage guides, or media houses (BBC). In this paper I address the question of who is seen as the linguistic authority in a diachronic corpus of language-related letters to the editor. The results of my analysis indicate that a shift occurred during the last century. Whereas in the first half of the twentieth century the authors of letters to the editor often refer to individuals, language professionals, as authority figures, the analysis of the later letters shows that in recent times it is institutions (dictionaries, the media) that are viewed as sources of authority on matters of usage instead. I intend to demonstrate that with the introduction of numerous web platforms offering language advice (Grammar Girl, Language Log), the question of who constitutes an authority on usage is currently shifting entirely, and that solutions to perceived usage problems are instead often negotiated by many participants in the discourse, experts and lay people alike. Keywords: linguistic prescriptivism, complaint tradition, linguistic authority, corpus-based analysis References: Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 2002. Authority in Language [3rd ed.]. London and New York: Routledge. Percy, Carol. 2009. Periodical reviews and the rise of prescriptivism: The Monthly (1749-1844) and Critical Review (1756-1817) in the 18th century. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Wim van der Wurff (eds.), Current Issues in Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang. 117-50.

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