late modern english Flashcards
what 2 things mainly happened during late modern English ?
standardisation and prescriptivism
what is standardisation?
process by which english acquired rules of grammar spelling punctuation, leading to late modern english
what time period is late modern english?
roughly 1700-1900
what is prescriptivism?
belief that there are right and wrong forms of language and should be regulated
what was the time frame of prescriptivism?
very popular from 1700-1960 roughly
what 4 things led to creation of standard english?
printing in EME was chaotic so there was a sense it needed to be standardised.
due to colonialism england wanted standard lang to represent authority
inspired by latin, wishing to remove defects
way of indicating social class and hierarchy
what was published in 1755?
spelling and punctuation standardised in Johnson’s dictionary.
when did SE replace latin as prestiged lang and get used in legal docs?
19th century
what did the 1870 education act result in?
universal education - everyone taught SE and RP.
what did media growth in the 1900s result in?
spread of SE even more
newsreader read in SE and RP
regional dialect seen as inferior
what is a descriptivist?
what we are now as linguists
describe and explain how language is used - not interested in setting rules.
what differs about sentence structure?
they were often longer and more complex, with punctuation being used slightly differently. now used to create prosody.
