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Full Description
Although 17th- and 18th-century English language theorists claimed to be correcting errors in grammar and preserving the language from corruption, this new study demonstrates how grammar served as an important cultural battlefield where social issues were contested. Author Linda C. Mitchell situates early modern linguistic discussions, long thought to be of little interest, in their larger cultural and social setting to show the startling degree to which grammar affected, and was affected by, such factors as class and gender. In her examination of the controversies that surrounded the teaching and study of grammar in this period, Mitchell looks especially at changing definitions and standardization of "grammar", how and to whom it was taught, and how grammar marked the social position of marginal groups. Her comprehensive study of the contexts in which grammar was intended or thought to function is based on her analysis of the ancillary materials - prefaces, introductions, forewords, statements of intent, organization of materials, surrounding materials, and manifestos of pedagogy, philosophy, and social or political goals - of more than 300 grammar texts of the time.The book is intended as a landmark study of an important movement in the foundation of the modern world.
Contents
Vernacular claims victorylinguistic authority. "Reformation of Schooles" - Hartlib, Comenius, Milton: architectural methaphor; Comenius and Hartlib: reception of Comenius's ideas; less grammar, more reading and writing. The battle - good grammar or good writing: putting grammar to work; rhetoric subsumes grammar - grammar texts as rhetoric handbooks; grammar texts and composition in the schoolroom. Repairing Babel - battles in universal language and universal grammar: language acquisition - Descartes and Locke; universal schemes in 17th-century England; universal language in 18th century England. Regulating social position: grammar for foreigners - a moral and national identity; grammar for the "weaker sex" - how much is morally appropriate?; self-generated identity - the middle class and the birth of the "language police".
