Title: Usage guides, social commentary and views on education in Late Modern Scotland
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2019, vol. 45, iss. 1, pp. [25]-42
Extent
[25]-42
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2019-1-2
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/140993
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This contribution discusses two texts published at the height of Late Modern times (Mitchell 1799 and Anon. 1826), in order to trace the roots of well-established labels occurring in assessments of Scottish usage even to this day. In particular, attention is paid to the qualifiers that the books employ both to stigmatize and to commend forms, so as to outline the kind of ideological stance they conveyed. The two relatively short books are now included in the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing, and will be presented within the framework of that collection as significant instances of books circulating when linguistic self-consciousness affected both upwardly-mobile speakers and well-educated users. Models of correct usage were found to be useful tools for the acquisition or improvement of both social status and prestige – aims which still resonate with users today and the pragmatic value of which is only just beginning to be explored in a new light.
References
[1] Adams, James (1799) The Pronunciation of the English Language. Edinburgh: Printed for the author by J. Moir.
[2] Anon. (1826) The Vulgarities of Speech Corrected; With Elegant Expressions for Provincial and Vulgar English, Scots and Irish; For the Use of Those Who Are Unacquainted with Grammar. London: Printed for James Bullock.
[3] Beattie, James (1779) Scoticisms, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, Designed to Correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing. Edinburgh: Printed for W. Creech.
[4] Buchanan, James (1757) Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronuntiatio. Reprinted in Alston, R. C. (ed.), English Linguistics 1500–1800, no. 39. London: The Scolar Press, 1968.
[5] Buchanan, James (1764) Essay towards Establishing a Standard for an Elegant and Uniform Pronunciation of the English Language, throughout the British Dominions as practised by the Most Learned and Polite Speakers. London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly.
[6] Burn, John (1777) A Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. Glasgow.
[7] Butler, Noble (c1846) A Practical Grammar of the English Language. Louisville: John P. Morton & Co.
[8] Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing, http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/cmsw/, accessed in Jan. 2019.
[9] Deanina, Carlo (1763) Extract from an Essay on the Progress of Learning among the Scots, […], Published Lately in the Italian Language, by Carlo Deanina, a Piedmontese. Transmitted in a Letter from Rome, dated February 5th, n.p.
[10] Enfield, William (1803) Speaker, or, Miscellaneous pieces: Selected from the Best English Writers and Disposed under Proper Heads, With a View to Facilitate the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking: To which is Prefixed an Essay on Elocution. Baltimore: Printed & sold by Warner & Hanna.
[11] Greig, J. Y. T. (ed.) (1932) The Letters of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[12] Hill Burton, John (1846) Life and Correspondence of David Hume. Edinburgh: William Tait
[13] Hume, David (1752) "Scotticisms". In Political Discourses. Edinburgh: Printed by R. Fleming, for A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, unnumbered pages.
[14] Jamieson, John (1808) An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press.
[15] Johnson, Samuel (1755). A Dictionary of the English Language. London: Printed by W. Strahan, for J. and P. Knapton; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley.
[16] Marshall, William H. (1787) Provincialisms of East Norfolk. The Rural Economy of Norfolk 2, 373–392.
[17] Marshall, William H. (1788) Provincialisms of East Yorkshire. The Rural Economy of Yorkshire 2, 303–366.
[18] Marshall, William H. (1790) Provincialisms of the Midland Counties. The Rural Economy of the Midland Counties 2, 377–389.
[19] Marshall, William H. (1796) Provincialisms of Devonshire. The Rural Economy of the West of England, including Devonshire, and parts of Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, and Cornwall 1, 323–332.
[20] Mitchell, Hugh (1799) Scotticisms, Vulgar Anglicisms, and Grammatical Improprieties Corrected, With Reasons for the Corrections. Glasgow: Printed by Falconer & Willison.
[21] Pinkerton, John (1786) Ancient Scotish Poems, Never Before in Print. London: Printed for Charles Dilly and William Creech at Edinburgh.
[22] Ray, John (1674) [1691] A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used. London: Printed for Christopher Wilkinson.
[23] Robertson, James (1722) The Ladies Help to Spelling. Glasgow: Printed by James Duncan.
[24] The Nietz Collection of Nineteenth-century Schoolbooks, http://digital.library.pitt.edu/collection/19th-century-schoolbooks, accessed in Jan. 2019.
[25] The Salamanca Corpus: Digital Archive of English Dialect Texts, http://www.thesalamancacorpus.com/index.html, accessed in March 2019.
[26] Town, Salem and Holbrook, Nelson M. (c1857) The Progressive Third Reader, For Public and Private Schools: Containing the elementary principles of elocution, illustrated by examples and exercises in connection with the tables and rules, and a series of lessons in reading: with original designs and engravings. Boston: Bazin & Ellsworth.
[27] Aitken, A. Jack (1979) Scottish speech: A historical view with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland”. In: Aitken, A. Jack and Tom McArthur (eds.) Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers, 85–118.
[28] Aitken, A. Jack (1992) Scotticism. In: McArthur, Tom (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 900–901.
[29] Anderson, Robert (2012) Learning: Education, class and culture. In: Hewitt, Martin (ed.) The Victorian World. Abingdon: Routledge, 484–499.
[30] Anderwald, Lieselotte (2012) Clumsy, awkward or having a peculiar propriety? Prescriptive judgements and language change in the nineteenth century. Language Sciences 34, 28–53. | DOI 10.1016/j.langsci.2011.06.002
[31] Basker, J. G. (1993) Scotticisms and the problem of cultural identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In: Dwyer, John and Richard B. Sher (eds.) Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland. Edinburgh: The Mercat Press, 81–95.
[32] Beal, Joan C. (2009). Three hundred years of prescriptivism (and counting). In: Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid and Wim van der Wurff (eds.) Current Issues in Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang, 35–56.
[33] Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[34] Copeman, W. S. C. (1951) Andrew Ure, M.D., F.R.S. (1778–1857). Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 44(8), 655–662.
[35] Craig, David (1961) Scottish Literature and the Scottish People 1680–1830. London: Chatto and Windus.
[36] Crowley, Tony (ed.) (1991) Proper English? London: Routledge.
[37] Dossena, Marina (1997) The search for linguistic excellence in eighteenth-century Scotland. Textus 10 (2), 355–376.
[38] Dossena, Marina (2005) Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary. Edinburgh: John Donald (Birlinn).
[39] Dossena, Marina (under review a) Peaceful coexistence? Ideology in the representation of languages and varieties in Late Modern literature. Plenary talk given at the First International Symposium on Approaches to Dialects in English Literature (1500–1950), Salamanca, 26–27 October 2017.
[40] Dossena, Marina (under review b) "Gems of Elocution and Humour": Ideology, prescription and description of American English in nineteenth-century textbooks. Paper presented at the ICEHL workshop on Early American English, Essen 2016.
[41] Filppula, Markku and Klemola, Juhani (2014) Celtic influences in English: A re-evaluation. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 115 (1), 33–53.
[42] Görlach, Manfred (1995) Dialect lexis in Early Modern English dictionaries. In: Görlach, Manfred (ed.) New Studies in the History of English. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 82–127.
[43] Grice, H. Paul (1975) Logic and conversation. In: Cole, Peter and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58.
[44] Hewitt, David (1987) James Beattie and the languages of Scotland. In: Carter, Jennifer J. and Joan H. Pittock (eds.) Aberdeen and the Enlightenment. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 251–260.
[45] Jones, Charles (1993) Scottish Standard English in the late eighteenth century. Transactions of the Philological Society 91 (1), 95–131. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-968X.1993.tb01066.x
[46] Jones, Charles (1997a) Phonology. In: Jones, Charles (ed.) The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 267–334.
[47] Jones, Charles (1997b) An early eighteenth century spelling book for ladies. English Studies 78 (5), 430–450. | DOI 10.1080/00138389708599093
[48] Leech, Geoffrey (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
[49] McClure, J. Derrick (1994) English in Scotland. In: Burchfield, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 5: 23–93.
[50] McClure, J. Derrick (1995) Scots and its Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[51] Paternoster, Annick (2019) Politeness and evaluative adjectives in Italian turn-of-the-century etiquette books (1877–1914). In: Paternoster, Annick and Susan Fitzmaurice (eds.) Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 107–144
[52] Picard, Liza (2009) Education in Victorian Britain. Available at http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/education/victorianeducation.html, accessed March 2019.
[53] Reed, Joseph W. and Pottle, Frederick A. (eds.) (1977) Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782. New York: McGraw-Hill.
[54] Rennie, Susan (2011) Boswell's Scottish dictionary rediscovered. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 32, 94–110.
[55] Rennie, Susan (2012a) Boswell's dictionary update. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 33, 205–207. | DOI 10.1353/dic.2012.0010
[56] Rennie, Susan (2012b) Jamieson's Dictionary of Scots: The Story of the First Historical Dictionary of the Scots Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[57] Rogers, Pat (1991) Boswell and the Scotticism. In: Clingham, Greg (ed.) New Light on Boswell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 56–71.
[58] Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (1985) "I will be drowned and no man shall save me": The conventional rules for shall and will in eighteenth-century English grammars. English Studies 66 (2), 123–142. | DOI 10.1080/00138388508598375
[59] Watts, Richard J. (1989) Relevance and relational work: Linguistic politeness as politic behavior. Multilingua 8 (2–3), 131–166. | DOI 10.1515/mult.1989.8.2-3.131
[60] Wilson, James (1915) Lowland Scotch as Spoken in the Lower Strathearn District of Perthshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[61] Wilson, James (1923) The Dialect of Robert Burns as Spoken in Central Ayrshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[62] Wilson, James (1926) The Dialects of Central Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[2] Anon. (1826) The Vulgarities of Speech Corrected; With Elegant Expressions for Provincial and Vulgar English, Scots and Irish; For the Use of Those Who Are Unacquainted with Grammar. London: Printed for James Bullock.
[3] Beattie, James (1779) Scoticisms, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, Designed to Correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing. Edinburgh: Printed for W. Creech.
[4] Buchanan, James (1757) Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronuntiatio. Reprinted in Alston, R. C. (ed.), English Linguistics 1500–1800, no. 39. London: The Scolar Press, 1968.
[5] Buchanan, James (1764) Essay towards Establishing a Standard for an Elegant and Uniform Pronunciation of the English Language, throughout the British Dominions as practised by the Most Learned and Polite Speakers. London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly.
[6] Burn, John (1777) A Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. Glasgow.
[7] Butler, Noble (c1846) A Practical Grammar of the English Language. Louisville: John P. Morton & Co.
[8] Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing, http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/cmsw/, accessed in Jan. 2019.
[9] Deanina, Carlo (1763) Extract from an Essay on the Progress of Learning among the Scots, […], Published Lately in the Italian Language, by Carlo Deanina, a Piedmontese. Transmitted in a Letter from Rome, dated February 5th, n.p.
[10] Enfield, William (1803) Speaker, or, Miscellaneous pieces: Selected from the Best English Writers and Disposed under Proper Heads, With a View to Facilitate the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking: To which is Prefixed an Essay on Elocution. Baltimore: Printed & sold by Warner & Hanna.
[11] Greig, J. Y. T. (ed.) (1932) The Letters of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[12] Hill Burton, John (1846) Life and Correspondence of David Hume. Edinburgh: William Tait
[13] Hume, David (1752) "Scotticisms". In Political Discourses. Edinburgh: Printed by R. Fleming, for A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, unnumbered pages.
[14] Jamieson, John (1808) An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press.
[15] Johnson, Samuel (1755). A Dictionary of the English Language. London: Printed by W. Strahan, for J. and P. Knapton; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley.
[16] Marshall, William H. (1787) Provincialisms of East Norfolk. The Rural Economy of Norfolk 2, 373–392.
[17] Marshall, William H. (1788) Provincialisms of East Yorkshire. The Rural Economy of Yorkshire 2, 303–366.
[18] Marshall, William H. (1790) Provincialisms of the Midland Counties. The Rural Economy of the Midland Counties 2, 377–389.
[19] Marshall, William H. (1796) Provincialisms of Devonshire. The Rural Economy of the West of England, including Devonshire, and parts of Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, and Cornwall 1, 323–332.
[20] Mitchell, Hugh (1799) Scotticisms, Vulgar Anglicisms, and Grammatical Improprieties Corrected, With Reasons for the Corrections. Glasgow: Printed by Falconer & Willison.
[21] Pinkerton, John (1786) Ancient Scotish Poems, Never Before in Print. London: Printed for Charles Dilly and William Creech at Edinburgh.
[22] Ray, John (1674) [1691] A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used. London: Printed for Christopher Wilkinson.
[23] Robertson, James (1722) The Ladies Help to Spelling. Glasgow: Printed by James Duncan.
[24] The Nietz Collection of Nineteenth-century Schoolbooks, http://digital.library.pitt.edu/collection/19th-century-schoolbooks, accessed in Jan. 2019.
[25] The Salamanca Corpus: Digital Archive of English Dialect Texts, http://www.thesalamancacorpus.com/index.html, accessed in March 2019.
[26] Town, Salem and Holbrook, Nelson M. (c1857) The Progressive Third Reader, For Public and Private Schools: Containing the elementary principles of elocution, illustrated by examples and exercises in connection with the tables and rules, and a series of lessons in reading: with original designs and engravings. Boston: Bazin & Ellsworth.
[27] Aitken, A. Jack (1979) Scottish speech: A historical view with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland”. In: Aitken, A. Jack and Tom McArthur (eds.) Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers, 85–118.
[28] Aitken, A. Jack (1992) Scotticism. In: McArthur, Tom (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 900–901.
[29] Anderson, Robert (2012) Learning: Education, class and culture. In: Hewitt, Martin (ed.) The Victorian World. Abingdon: Routledge, 484–499.
[30] Anderwald, Lieselotte (2012) Clumsy, awkward or having a peculiar propriety? Prescriptive judgements and language change in the nineteenth century. Language Sciences 34, 28–53. | DOI 10.1016/j.langsci.2011.06.002
[31] Basker, J. G. (1993) Scotticisms and the problem of cultural identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In: Dwyer, John and Richard B. Sher (eds.) Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland. Edinburgh: The Mercat Press, 81–95.
[32] Beal, Joan C. (2009). Three hundred years of prescriptivism (and counting). In: Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid and Wim van der Wurff (eds.) Current Issues in Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang, 35–56.
[33] Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[34] Copeman, W. S. C. (1951) Andrew Ure, M.D., F.R.S. (1778–1857). Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 44(8), 655–662.
[35] Craig, David (1961) Scottish Literature and the Scottish People 1680–1830. London: Chatto and Windus.
[36] Crowley, Tony (ed.) (1991) Proper English? London: Routledge.
[37] Dossena, Marina (1997) The search for linguistic excellence in eighteenth-century Scotland. Textus 10 (2), 355–376.
[38] Dossena, Marina (2005) Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary. Edinburgh: John Donald (Birlinn).
[39] Dossena, Marina (under review a) Peaceful coexistence? Ideology in the representation of languages and varieties in Late Modern literature. Plenary talk given at the First International Symposium on Approaches to Dialects in English Literature (1500–1950), Salamanca, 26–27 October 2017.
[40] Dossena, Marina (under review b) "Gems of Elocution and Humour": Ideology, prescription and description of American English in nineteenth-century textbooks. Paper presented at the ICEHL workshop on Early American English, Essen 2016.
[41] Filppula, Markku and Klemola, Juhani (2014) Celtic influences in English: A re-evaluation. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 115 (1), 33–53.
[42] Görlach, Manfred (1995) Dialect lexis in Early Modern English dictionaries. In: Görlach, Manfred (ed.) New Studies in the History of English. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 82–127.
[43] Grice, H. Paul (1975) Logic and conversation. In: Cole, Peter and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58.
[44] Hewitt, David (1987) James Beattie and the languages of Scotland. In: Carter, Jennifer J. and Joan H. Pittock (eds.) Aberdeen and the Enlightenment. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 251–260.
[45] Jones, Charles (1993) Scottish Standard English in the late eighteenth century. Transactions of the Philological Society 91 (1), 95–131. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-968X.1993.tb01066.x
[46] Jones, Charles (1997a) Phonology. In: Jones, Charles (ed.) The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 267–334.
[47] Jones, Charles (1997b) An early eighteenth century spelling book for ladies. English Studies 78 (5), 430–450. | DOI 10.1080/00138389708599093
[48] Leech, Geoffrey (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
[49] McClure, J. Derrick (1994) English in Scotland. In: Burchfield, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 5: 23–93.
[50] McClure, J. Derrick (1995) Scots and its Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[51] Paternoster, Annick (2019) Politeness and evaluative adjectives in Italian turn-of-the-century etiquette books (1877–1914). In: Paternoster, Annick and Susan Fitzmaurice (eds.) Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 107–144
[52] Picard, Liza (2009) Education in Victorian Britain. Available at http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/education/victorianeducation.html, accessed March 2019.
[53] Reed, Joseph W. and Pottle, Frederick A. (eds.) (1977) Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782. New York: McGraw-Hill.
[54] Rennie, Susan (2011) Boswell's Scottish dictionary rediscovered. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 32, 94–110.
[55] Rennie, Susan (2012a) Boswell's dictionary update. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 33, 205–207. | DOI 10.1353/dic.2012.0010
[56] Rennie, Susan (2012b) Jamieson's Dictionary of Scots: The Story of the First Historical Dictionary of the Scots Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[57] Rogers, Pat (1991) Boswell and the Scotticism. In: Clingham, Greg (ed.) New Light on Boswell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 56–71.
[58] Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (1985) "I will be drowned and no man shall save me": The conventional rules for shall and will in eighteenth-century English grammars. English Studies 66 (2), 123–142. | DOI 10.1080/00138388508598375
[59] Watts, Richard J. (1989) Relevance and relational work: Linguistic politeness as politic behavior. Multilingua 8 (2–3), 131–166. | DOI 10.1515/mult.1989.8.2-3.131
[60] Wilson, James (1915) Lowland Scotch as Spoken in the Lower Strathearn District of Perthshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[61] Wilson, James (1923) The Dialect of Robert Burns as Spoken in Central Ayrshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[62] Wilson, James (1926) The Dialects of Central Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.