Chapter published in:
Late Modern English: Novel encounters
Edited by Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg
[Studies in Language Companion Series 214] 2020
► pp. 186–202

“Divided by a common language”?

The treatment of Americanism(s) in Late Modern English dictionaries and usage guides on both sides of the Atlantic

| Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg
The present study investigates the treatment of the term Americanism and its plural form in their generic sense in selected British and American reference works of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It concentrates on two special types of reference books, namely dictionaries of Americanisms and usage guides from both sides of the Atlantic. By analyzing whether the paraphrase or the labelling conveys a positive, a neutral, or a negative stance, the terms Americanism(s) serve as keywords for Anglo-American linguistic attitudes towards the “other” variety. Methodologically, the study combines socio-lexicography and meta-pragmatics; the results show a change in the relationship of the two varieties and also substantive differences in how the two types of reference book deal with the topic.
Published online: 18 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.214.08bus
References

References

1.Primary sources

1.1Dictionaries

Bartlett, John Russell
4 1896 [1848] Dictionary of Americanisms. A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States. Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Beattie, James
1787 Scoticisms arranged in Alphabetical Order, designed to correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing. Edinburgh: Creech.Google Scholar
DA = Matthews, Mitford M.
1951 Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DAE = Craigie, W. A. & Hulbert, James Root
1938 A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, 4 Vols. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DOST = Craigie, William A., Aitken, Adam J. & Stevenson, James A. C.
1931–1986 A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue from the twelfth Century to the end of the Seventeenth, 6 Vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.Google Scholar
EDD = Wright, Joseph
1898–1905 The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 Vols. Oxford: Henry Frowde.Google Scholar
Farmer, John S.
1889 Americanisms – Old & New. A Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms Peculiar to the United States, British America, The West Indies, & c., & c. London: Thomas Poulter & Sons.Google Scholar
Jamieson, John
1808 An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, illustrating the words in their different significations, by examples from ancient and modern writers, 2 Vols. Edinburgh: University Press.Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary
Third edn. online www​.oed​.com
Mackie, Alexander
1881 Scotticisms arranged and corrected. London: Hamilton Adams & Co.Google Scholar
Pickering, John
1816 A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the United States of America. Boston MA [repr. together with Noah Webster: A Letter to the Honorable John Pickering. 1817. New York NY, 1974].Google Scholar
SND = Grant, William & Murison, David D.
1931–1976 The Scottish National Dictionary, designed partly on regional lines and partly on historical principles, and containing all the Scottish words known to be in use or to have been in use c. 1700, 10 Vols. Edinburgh: The Scottish National Dictionary Association.Google Scholar
Thornton, Richard H.
1912 An American Glossary. Being an attempt to illustrate certain Americanisms upon historical principles. Philadelphia PA: J. B. Lippincott and London: Francis & Co.Google Scholar

1.2Usage guides

Alford, Henry
[1864] 5 1880 The Queen’s English. A Manual of Idiom and Usage. London: George Bell and Sons.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. W.
1926 and [1965] 2 1968 Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. W. & Fowler, F. G.
[1906] 3 1931 The King’s English. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Gowers, Sir Ernest
1948 Plain Words. A Guide to the Use of English. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office.Google Scholar
Moon, George Washington
[1865] 10 1876 The Dean’s English. A Criticism on the Dean of Canterbury’s Essays on the Queen’s English. London: Hatchards.Google Scholar
Partridge, Eric
[1942] 5 1957 Usage and Abusage. A Guide to Good English. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
White, Richard Grant
[1870] 9 1886 Words and their Uses, Past and Present. A Study of the English Language. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.Google Scholar

2.Secondary sources

Aitken, Adam Jack
1990 The lexicography of Scots. In Wörterbücher, Dictionaries, Dictionnaires. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography, Vol. 2 [Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 5.2], Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand & Ladislav Zgusta (eds), 1983–1987. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Algeo, John
1990 American lexicography. In Wörterbücher, Dictionaries, Dictionnaires. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography, Vol. 2 [Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 5.2], Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand & Ladislav Zgusta (eds), 1987–2009. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Baron, Dennis E.
1982 Grammar and Good Taste. Reforming the American Language. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas
2002 A History of the English Language, 5th edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beal, Joan C.
2004 English in Modern Times 1700–1945. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Busse, Ulrich & Schröder, Anne
2010 How Fowler became ‘The Fowler’: An anatomy of a success story. English Today. The International Review of the English Language 26(2): 45–54. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Busse, Ulrich
2015 Transatlantic perspectives on late nineteenth-century English usage: Alford (1864) compared to White (1871). In Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 4], Marina Dossena (ed.), 73–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Crystal, David
2018  Punch as a satirical usage guide. In English Usage Guides. History, Advice, Attitudes, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.), 83–106. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Finegan, Edward
1998 English grammar and usage. In The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. IV: 1776–1997, Suzanne Romaine (ed.), 536–588. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
2001 Usage. In The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. VI: English in North America, John Algeo (ed.), 358–421. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gilman, E. Ward
1989 A brief history of English usage. In Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, E. Ward Gilman (ed.), 7a–11a. Springfield IL: Merriam Webster.Google Scholar
Görlach, Manfred
1990 The dictionary of transplanted varieties of language: English. In Wörterbücher, Dictionaries, Dictionnaires. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography, Vol. 2 [Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 5.2], Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand & Ladislav Zgusta (eds), 1475–1499. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gowers, Rebecca
2018 Even more complete words. In English Usage Guides. History, Advice, Attitudes, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.), 69–81. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Graddol, David
1996 English manuscripts: The emergence of a visual identity. In English. History, Diversity and Change, David Graddol, Dick Leith & Joan Swann (eds), 41–94. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hübler, Axel & Busse, Ulrich
2012 Introduction. In Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English [Pragmatics & Beyond. New Series 220], Ulrich Busse & Axel Hübler (eds), 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kretzschmar Jr., William A. & Meyer, Charles F.
2012 The idea of Standard American English. In Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World, Raymond Hickey (ed.), 139–158. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley
2001 Britain and the United States: Two nations divided by the same language (and different language ideologies). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10(1): 56–89. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ruano-García, Javier, García-Bermejo Giner, María F. & Sánchez-García, Pilar
2015 ‘Provincial in England, but in common with us’: John R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms and the English Dialect Dictionary . In Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 4], Marina Dossena (ed.), 99–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Straaijer, Robin
2018 The usage guide: Evolution of a genre. In English Usage Guides. History, Advice, Attitudes, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.), 11–29. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Strang, Barbara M. H.
1970 A History of English. London: Methuen & Co.Google Scholar
Sundby, Bertil, Bjørge, Anne Kari & Haugland, Kari E.
1991 A Dictionary of English Normative Grammar 1700–1800 [Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science 63]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J.
2008 Grammar writers in eighteenth-century Britain: A community of practice or a discourse community? In Grammars, Grammarians and Grammar-Writing in Eighteenth-Century England, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.), 37–56. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar