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News with an Attitude: Ideological perspectives in the historical press
Edited by Claudia Claridge
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 105] 2025
► pp. 227–250

Chapter 11
Language ideologies in the 18th century

The public discussion of language in the Spectators from the English-, Italian- and German-speaking areas

| University of Trento | University of Augsburg
In the 18th century, public discussion on language was influenced by the philosophical debates of the Age of Enlightenment, bearing a theoretical character. The discussions found concrete expression in the moral weeklies (known as “Spectators”), a prototype of opinion journalism which developed from Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s periodical The Spectator (London, 1711–1712 and 1714). The Spectators experienced a European circulation through translations and imitations, thus contributing to the creation of wide communication networks among scholars. Concurrently, the language discussion and related ideas also spread beyond national borders. This study aims to compare the use of some topoi in the language discussions of the Spectator periodicals to investigate the continuity or innovation of metalinguistic concepts and their underlying language ideologies.
Keywords: Spectator periodicals, language ideologies, linguistic discourse analysis, topoi, metaphors, European Enlightenment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Spectators: A new journalistic discourse tradition
  • 3.Main characteristics of the Spectators
  • 4.The use of topoi in language discussions
  • 5.Language ideologies and metaphors
  • 6.Aim, corpus, and methodology
  • 7.Continuity of topoi
    • 7.1The “servile imitation”
    • 7.2The “abuse of words”
    • 7.3The “depletion” or “enrichment” of a language
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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