
Language Anxiety : Conflict and Change in the History of English.
Title:
Language Anxiety : Conflict and Change in the History of English.
Author:
Machan, Tim William.
ISBN:
9780191552489
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (313 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Acknowledgements -- On the Use of Phonetic Symbols -- 1 Language, Change, and Response -- 2 A Moveable Speech -- 3 Narratives of Change -- 4 Policy and Politics -- 5 Say the Right Thing -- 6 Fixing English -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.
Abstract:
This engaging and wide-ranging history of language anxiety ranges from the Tower of Babel to the internet. It shows how worry about language results from and causes linguistic change, as well as fuelling perennial concerns about class, culture, identity, and social change. - ;This book looks at the ever-present anxieties associated with language change. Focusing on English from Alfred the Great to the present, Tim Machan offers a fresh perspective on the history of language. He reveals amusing and sometimes disconcerting aspects of our linguistic and social behavior and suggests that anxiety about language has sometimes allowed us to avoid the issues we really find disturbing: when speakers of English worry over grammar, sounds, or words the real source. of their anxiety is often not language at all but issues like immigration or social instability. Drawing on an array of evidence from archives, literature, history, polemics, and the press, as well as centuries of legislation, Tim Machan uncovers the perennial nature of concerns about the poverty and purity of English. There has never been a time, he shows, when we weren't worried about the corruption of language and its apparent connections with educational standards, the morality of youth, the integrity of society, and the identity of our nations. This is a fascinating story, told here. in consummate fashion, combining insight and anecdote, and learning with wit - a book for everyone interested in languages and the people who speak them. -.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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