Product details
- ISBN 9780367207182
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 Oct 2019
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Describing Prescriptivism provides a topical and thought-provoking analysis of linguistic prescriptivism in British and American English, from a historical as well as present-day perspective. Focusing on usage guides and usage problems, the book takes a three-fold approach to present an in-depth analysis of the topic, featuring:
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- a detailed study of the advice provided in usage guides over the years;
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- an authoritative comparison of this advice with actual usage as recorded in British and American corpora, including the HUGE (Hyper Usage Guide of English) database – developed specifically to enable this line of study – as well as more mainstream corpora such as COCA, COHA and the BNC;
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- a close analysis of the attitudes to particular usage problems among the general public, based on surveys distributed online through the "Bridging the Unbridgeable" research project’s blog.*
With extensive case studies to illustrate and support claims throughout, this comprehensive study is key reading for students and researchers of prescriptivism, the history of English and sociolinguistics.
*Found at https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade is Chair in English Sociohistorical Linguistics, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, and has published extensively on the latter end of the English standardisation process.
