The Languages of Nation

This book explores research on linguistic prescriptivism and social identities, in contemporary and historical contexts of cross-cultural contact and awareness. Providing multilingual and multidisciplinary perspectives on both institutional and informal mechanisms of prescriptivism, our contributors relate language norms to frameworks of identity.

This collection brings together research on linguistic prescriptivism and social identities, in specific contemporary and historical contexts of cross-cultural contact and awareness. Providing multilingual and multidisciplinary perspectives from language studies, lexicography, literature, and cultural studies, our contributors relate language norms to frameworks of identity beyond monolingual citizenship - nativeness, ethnicity, politics, religion, empire. Some chapters focus on traditional instruments of prescriptivism: language academies in Europe; government language planners in southeast Asia; dictionaries and grammars from Early Modern and imperial Britain, republican America, the postcolonial Caribbean, and modern Germany. Other chapters consider the roles of scholars in prescriptivism, as well as the more informal and populist mechanisms of enforcement expressed in newspapers. With a thematic introduction articulating links between its breadth of perspectives, this accessible book should engage everyone concerned with language norms.

1. Introduction: Multidisciplinary and Multilingual Perspectives on National Language Norms - Carol Percy and Mary Catherine Davidson
2. Preface: Language, Prescriptivism, Nationalism and Identity - John Edwards
Section 1. Managing Language Policies
3. William Cecil and the Rectification of English - Ian Lancashire
4. Prescribing Pastoral and Pragmatic Orientations: Challenges for Language Policy - Lionel Wee
Section 2. Colonialism and Literary Canons
5. Mutual Preservation of Standard Language and National Identity in Early Modern Wales - John D. Phillips
6. “A Highly Poetical Language”? Scots, Burns, Patriotism and Evaluative Language in 19th Century Literary Reviews and Articles - Marina Dossena
Section 3. Transmarine and Transatlantic Allegiances
7. Language and National Identity in 17th and 18th century England - Linda C. Mitchell
8. “À la mode de Paris”: Linguistic Patriotism and Francophobia in 18th century Britain - Joan C. Beal
9. Pronouncing Dictionaries between Patriotism and Prescriptivism: Perspectives on Provincialism in Webster’s America - Massimo Sturiale
Section 4. Re-defining Boundaries: Ideology and Language Norms
10. Patriotism, Empire, and Cultural Prescriptivism: Images of Anglicity in the OED - Lynda Mugglestone
11. You Say Nucular, I Say Yourstupid: Popular Prescriptivism in the Politics of the United States - Don Chapman
Section 5. Identifying Norms and Attitudes in Postcolonial Contexts
12. English and Pidgin in Cameroon: Peaceful or Conflicting Co-existence? - Jean-Paul Kouega
13. “Susu” not “Sousou”: Nationalism, Prescriptivism, and Etymology in a Post-colonial Creole Language Orthography - Lise Winer
Section 6. Prescribing Norms beyond Borders: Foreign Language Teaching
14. Rules for the Neighbours: Prescriptions of the German Language for British Learners - Nicola McLelland
15. Nativeness, Authority, Authenticity: The Construction of Belonging and Exclusion in Debates about English Language Proficiency and Immigration in Britain - Martin Gill