This path-breaking study of the standardisation of English goes well beyond the traditional prescriptivism versus descriptivism debate. It argues that the way norms are established and enforced is the result of a complex network of social factors and cannot be explained simply by appeals to power and hegemony. It brings together insights from leading researchers to re-centre the discussion on linguistic communities and language users. It examines the philosophy underlying the urge to standardise language, and takes a closer look at both well-known and lesser-known historical dictionaries, grammars and usage guides, demonstrating that they cannot be simply labelled as 'prescriptivist'. Drawing on rich empirical data and case studies, it shows how the norm continues to function in society, influencing and affecting language users even today.

Author Biography

Linda Pilliere is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Universite d'Aix-Marseille and a member of the Lerma Research Centre. After completing a Ph.D. on the linguistic aspects of Virginia Woolf's style, she has focussed on language variation and change, and stylistics. Her recent publications include articles on normative editorial practices and varieties of English. Wilfrid Andrieu is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Universite d'Aix-Marseille and a member of the Lerma Research Centre. His published and current research focuses on the history of linguistic concepts and particularly on the development of the analysis of the complex sentence. Valerie Kerfelec is Associate Professor in English Linguistics at Universite d'Aix-Marseille and a member of the Lerma Research Centre. Her research interests are in the interface between syntax and prosody, and in contrastive linguistics. She has a special interest in exclamatives and is the author of a monograph on the topic, L'exclamation en francais et en anglais: formes, sens, effets (2009). Diana Lewis is Associate Professor of English linguistics at Universite d'Aix-Marseille and a member of the Lerma Research Centre. She has published in the areas of semantic and morphosyntactic change, markers of discourse relations, and contrastive linguistics. She is currently working on adverbial grammaticalization in English and co-editing a volume on contrastive genre analysis.