Authority in Language: Investigating Standard EnglishRoutledge, 2012 M03 12 - 208 pages Authority in Language explores the perennially topical and controversial notion of correct and incorrect language. James and Lesley Milroy cover the long-running debate over the teaching of Standard English in Britain and compare the language ideologies in Britain and the USA, involving a discussion of the English-Only movement and the Ebonics controversy. They consider the historical process of standardisation and its social consequences, in particular discrimination against low-status and ethnic minority groups on the basis of their language traits. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new foreword and a new afterword in which the authors broaden their earlier concept of language ideology. Authority in Language is indispensable reading for educationalists, teachers and linguists and a long-standing text for courses in sociolinguistics, modern English grammar, history of English and language ideology. |
From inside the book
Results 6-10 of 57
... appears to be an article of faith at the moment that judgments evaluating differences between standard and non-standard varieties are always socially conditioned and never purely linguistic. However, we shall later suggest that the ...
... appears to them as ignorant, presumptuous and pointlessly offensive. The linguist's academic interest in the human capacity to learn and use language is not a threat to the teaching of standard English, and it can be a great benefit. It ...
... and on supposed linguistic decline . These statements by guardians appear frequently in the press ; general ' popular ' attitudes ( i.e. privately held attitudes of ordinary people), however, may not be quite so easily accessible.
... appear to have ' gaps ' in the system at some point . For example , English does not have a reflexive possessive ... appears to be a useful resource in these non - standard dialects ( even though the standard speaker can disambiguate ...
... appear to spread at the expense of others and to survive as others die out. English in Britain, for example, has spread at the expense of Celtic languages, and in Australia, aboriginal languages are threatened by English. Is this not a ...
Contents
Standard English and the complaint tradition | |
Spoken and written norms | |
Grammar and speech | |
Linguistic prescription and the speech community | |
Linguistic repertoires and communicative competence | |
Planned and unplanned speech events | |
educational issues | |
the standard language ideology | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |