Normalisationis the fixing of the norms and standards of a language to protect it from corruption and change.
Type of Standard | Written Standard | Spoken Standard |
Time Limits | by the 17th c. | end of the 18th c. |
Sources | Language of Chaucer (the London Dialect) | private letters; speech of characters in drama; references to speech be scholars. |
Peculiarities | 1. less stabilised than at later stage; 2. wide range of variation (spelling, gr. forms, syntactical patterns, choice of words, etc. ); 3. rivalry with Latin in the field of science, philosophy, didactics. | 1. As spoken standard the scholars considered the speech of educated people taught at school as “correct English”. This was the speech of London and that of Cambridge and Oxford Universities. |
The normalisation of the English language started in the 17th – 18th c. In 1710 Jonathan Swiftpublished in his journal “The Tatler” an article titled “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue”. J. Swift was a purist (struggled for the purity of the language) and suggested that a body of scholars should gather to fix the rules of the language usage. The Normalisation of the English language consisted in publishing:
Grammar’s of English:
John Wallis, “Grammatica Lingæ Anglicanæ” (prescriptive/normative grammar);
Robert Lowth, “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” (Lowth distinguished 9 parts of speech; made consistent description of letters, syllables, words and sentences; rules of no-double negation (I don’t want no dinner – incorrect!) and no-double comparison (more better – incorrect!) appeared, etc.).
Dictionaries(18th c.):
E. Coles, “Dictionary of Hard Words” (gave explanations of hard words and phrases);
Samuel Johnson– one of the best-known English lexicographers. As well as J. Swift, he was a purist and believed that the English language should be purified and corrected. He was the first to compile a dictionary that resembles the present-day dictionaries.