Attitudes toward English Usage: The History of a War of Words

This paper pursues the proposition that today’s English can be likened to a spectacularly-coloured butterfly that is always prepared to flutter forward undaunted by its dazzling change over time. In order to exemplify change as a long-term characteristic of English, this paper charts the progress of the second person ‘you’ pronoun, from Old English days, through to Middle English times, arriving into Modern English where the ‘you’ pronoun displays seemingly prodigal behaviour having abandoned its richness of case forms, resulting in a single form now representing all cases while also indicating both a multiple person audience while equally interpreted to indicate a singular person audience. However, it is clear that the latter behaviour is at odds with ‘you’ requiring a grammatically plural verbal particle. Such a paradox may leave ESL, and even native speakers, with an unfavourable impression that ‘you’ has to be accepted as an un-analysable concept. Given existing claims of lethargy in correctly informing the Academy on a range of English Grammar topics, this paper seeks to follow a Critical Theory methodology of evidence-based analysis of the ‘you’ situation; that is, this analysis consults Old English texts through to Middle English texts to today’s English usage, always providing supporting examples along the way.

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On the Origin of the Grammarians' Rules for the Use of Shall and Will

PMLA ◽

10.1632/459156 ◽

1947 ◽

Vol 62 (4) ◽

pp. 1178-1182

Author(s):

J. R. Hulbert

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Eighteenth Century ◽

American English ◽

Recent Book ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

English Grammar ◽

Important Study ◽

English Usage ◽

History Of ◽

The Subject

The most important study of the future with shall and will in Modern English is the article by Professor Fries published twenty years ago. In Part One, “The origin and development of the conventional rules,” Professor Fries presents a remarkably concise and thorough survey of the treatment of shall and will by English grammarians from 1530 to the early nineteenth century. In Part Two he summarizes the results of an analysis of the use of shall and will in English plays from 1557 to 1915, compares American with English usage, considers the theory of ‘glimmering through’ of ‘primitive meanings,‘ and states his conclusions. Professor Fries reverts to the subject in his recent book, American English Grammar. Here he says:The conventional rules for shall and will did not arise from any attempt to describe the practice of the language as it actually was either before the eighteenth century or at the time the grammar was written in which these rules first appeared. The authors of these grammars (Lowth and Ward) definitely repudiated usage…. That the general usage of shall and will did not at any time during the history of Modern English agree with the conventional rules is a conclusion that can be reasonably drawn from the facts revealed in the following charts.

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Prescriptive Attitudes to English Usage

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.271 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade ◽

Carmen Ebner

Keyword(s):

21St Century ◽

Modal Approach ◽

English Usage ◽

History Of ◽

Descriptive Approach ◽

Representative Samples ◽

Attitude Surveys

Taking a sociolinguistic approach to prescriptivism in English usage, this article presents different methods by which highly frequent usage problems can be analyzed as to their current acceptability. These methods comprise different ways of studying a selected number of well-known items—try and/try to, the placement of only, the split infinitive and the dangling participle—focusing on their treatment in British and American usage guides from the beginning of the prescriptive tradition onward, combined with the application of special elicitation techniques to probe the views of informants. Such a multi-modal approach represents a distinct improvement from earlier attempts at presenting targeted groups of informants with attitude surveys only. By studying representative samples of British and American usage guides, the article shows that attitudes became more lenient across time (though not for all usage problems analyzed), with the sociolinguistic variable age playing an important role in the process, but also that instead of usage guides becoming more descriptive in the course of the history of the tradition, today in effect two trends can be distinguished in the type of usage advice given. While one trend indeed shows an increasingly descriptive approach to the items treated, a continuing proscriptive approach characterizes usage guides published down to the beginning of the 21st century.

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English in Cuba

English Today ◽

10.1017/s0266078419000233 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Ulises Escalona Sánchez ◽

Melinda Reichelt

Keyword(s):

Foreign Languages ◽

The Future ◽

History Of ◽

Attitudes Toward English

English has played a role in Cuba since the 19th century. This article provides a brief history of English in Cuba (see Figure 1 for Cuba map), contextualizing it in terms of other foreign languages in the Cuban environment, and describing Cubans’ attitudes toward English. This article also overviews the presence of English in the Cuban media, workplace, and diplomacy. Additionally, a large portion of this article is devoted to describing the teaching of English in Cuba at all levels of education. Finally, predications are made about the future of English in Cuba.

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