New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research: (176 Multilingual Matters)

This book investigates the connections between evaluative judgements on language and the larger social, cultural, and political issues that shed light on the practice of prescriptivism. The chapters cover three main areas: language, which represents the traditional roots of the study of linguistic norms in authoritative (historical) manuals and judgemental attitudes to language usage; literary and scripted texts, which illustrates the enregisterment of the values of linguistic prescriptivism as a social and cultural phenomenon; and speech communities, which reflects the growth in scope of the field to consider geographical contexts beyond mainstream British and American English to include varieties of English and other languages worldwide. The book also discusses recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of prescriptivism.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Chapter 1. Nuria Yáñez-Bouza: Prescriptivism in Language, Literary Texts and Speech Communities Part 1: Prescriptivism in Language Norms Chapter 2. Marco Wiemann: 'One of the commonest faults of even well-bred people'? Attitudes towards Post-vocalic /r/-absence, /h/-dropping and /h/-insertion in 19th-Century English Grammars   Chapter 3. Carmen Ebner-Mosely: 'Your not my type': Effects of Stigmatised Linguistic Variation in Online Dating Chapter 4. Anja Wanner and Difei (Lynn) Zhang: Bad Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness Part 2: Prescriptivism in Literary and Scripted Texts Chapter 5. Joan C. Beal: Poetry’s for Kings: Prescriptivism and Resistance in English Poetry     Chapter 6. Jane Hodson: The Significance of Stance in Fictional Representations of Non-Standard Language and Prescriptivism    Chapter 7. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Breaking the Who/Whom Rule: The Final Taboo?      Chapter 8. Linda Pillière: Evaluating the Standardising Influence of the Copy Editor: A Qualitative Study Part 3: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities I: Varieties of English Chapter 9. Lucía Loureiro-Porto: 'He speak very careful English': A View on Prescriptivism in Two Outer-Circle Varieties of English Chapter 10. Kranti Doibale, Sachin Labade and Claudia Lange: Indian English Usage in the 21st Century: Enduring Colonial Norms and Emerging Local Standards Chapter 11. Magdalena Císlerová: 'Cahstle, (…) not kehstle': Reflections of Prescriptivism in Australian Literature Part 4: Prescriptivism in Speech Communities II: Beyond English Speaking Communities Chapter 12. Heimir F. Viðarsson: Towards Modelling Past and Present Effects of Prescriptivism: Icelandic 19th- and 21st-Century Student Essays Chapter 13. Spiros A. Moschonas, Costas Mourlas and Thodoris Paraskevas: Prescriptivism and Variation: The Greek Word for 'Coronavirus' Chapter 14. Machteld de Vos and Marten van der Meulen: Suppressed No More: Prescriptivism and the Evaluation of Optional Variability Index

About the Author :
Nuria Yáñez-Bouza is Senior Lecturer at the University of Vigo, Spain and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research interests lie in historical sociolinguistics with a focus on the relationship between norms and usage in the 18th century. She has also been actively involved in the field of Digital Humanities with the compilation of corpora and electronic databases. María E. Rodríguez-Gil is Lecturer in the Department of Modern Philology, Translation and Interpreting at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Her research expertise lies in the field of the 18th-century grammatical tradition, the relationship between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and the history of the teaching of English to a native and non-native audience. Javier Pérez-Guerra is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vigo, Spain. His areas of specialisation are information packaging in the clause, multidimensional approaches to register variation as applied to earlier periods of English, the study of grammatical variation between modern and Present-day English from corpus-based empirical perspectives, and the impact of performance preferences and ease of processing on the design of grammars.

Review :
This important volume showcases prescriptivism in diverse linguistic, historical and sociocultural settings. Normative attitudes and practices are integral to people’s linguistic behaviour, and this book puts a powerful spotlight on the need to balance prescriptive and descriptive perspectives – without this marriage of opposites, we cannot hope to understand the complex and dynamic nature of human language. Embark on a captivating journey into prescriptivism research with this insightful volume. Seamlessly integrating compelling case studies from diverse languages and varieties into thematic strands, the book not only celebrates the field's richness but also underscores its mature evolution, unveiling enticing avenues for future exploration. This fascinating collection demonstrates the complexity of prescriptivism as a cultural and linguistic phenomenon in settings ranging from dating apps to movie scripts and from 16th-century English poetics to the 21st-century Greek spelling of coronavirus. The authors deploy sophisticated methods and raise new questions that stimulate thought beyond the binary of prescriptivism vs. descriptivism.