Carol Percy

List of John Benjamins publications for which Carol Percy plays a role.

Journal

Hyett, James and Carol Percy 2024 Gender, genre, and prescriptivism: Eighteenth-century female playwrights’ use of you was and you wereUnlocking the History of English: Pragmatics, prescriptivism and text types, Caon, Luisella, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck (eds.), pp. 60–84 | Chapter
This paper extends our previous study of you was and you were in eighteenth-century English drama, examining trends following Robert Lowth’s proscription of you was in his grammar (1762) and complementing Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s (2002) and Laitinen’s (2009) studies of different genres.… read more
Hyett, James and Carol Percy 2022 Chapter 11. Theatrical practices and grammatical standardization in eighteenth-century Britain: you was and you wereEnglish Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning, Los, Bettelou, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), pp. 263–286 | Chapter
This chapter extends the discussion of second-person pronouns and of eighteenth-century language norms by examining three playwrights’ use of you was in the period before its proscription by grammarians like Robert Lowth (1762). Our analysis corroborates historical sociolinguistic surveys by… read more
In this study, I focus the large subject of Late Modern English in newly independent America through the lens of the politician and scholar Thomas Jefferson. Drawing on evidence relating to the several libraries he assembled serially over his lifetime, especially on catalogues and correspondence,… read more
This article provides a broad intellectual context for Robert Lowth’s (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), and in particular for the footnotes or “Critical Notes” in which he documented the grammatical errors of great dead writers. It is well known that Lowth’s notes were… read more
Percy, Carol 2010 How eighteenth-century book reviewers became language guardiansSocial Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English, Pahta, Päivi, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), pp. 55–85 | Article
Contributing to studies of standardization in mid eighteenth-century Britain, this paper draws on a corpus of criticism in the new review periodicals in order to explain reviewers’ enthusiastic enforcement of linguistically prescriptive rules. Reflecting consumers’ need for guidance in an expanding… read more
Beal, Joan C., Jane Hodson, Richard Steadman-Jones and Carol Percy 2006 New approaches to the study of later modern EnglishNew Approaches to the Study of Later Modern English, pp. 1–9 | Introduction
On the basis of an analysis of works for children published by Ellenor Fenn (1743–1813) in the 1780s, an argument is offered concerning the significance of English grammar to the domestic education of elite boys and girls. The topic is contextualized in overviews of the high social value of… read more