Just after the start of the research project Bridging the
Unbridgeable: Linguists, Prescriptivists and the General Public in
2011, we laid our hands on a file called ‘Reactions to L. Trap’. The
file contains well over 200 documents: letters, picture postcards,
notes, newspaper clippings, and various other items, almost all of
them relating to the reception of a pamphlet called The
Language Trap, written by John Honey (1933–2001) and
published in 1983 by the British National Council for Educational
Standards (NCES). The file was offered for sale by Plurabelle Books
in Cambridge as part of the late John Honey's library, and acquiring
it offered a unique opportunity to study the reception of this
highly controversial publication, not only by linguists, but also by
the general public. Both groups responded in large numbers to the
publicity the pamphlet inspired, in the press as well as on the
radio.
