The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

26Grammar Wars: Seventeenth‐ and Eighteenth‐Century England

LINDA C. MITCHELL

1 Introduction

Although seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century English grammarians claimed to be correcting errors in grammar and protecting the language from corruption, they were in fact positioning themselves on a cultural battlefield, using linguistics to protest social issues. As a result, English grammar affected, and was affected by, such factors as race and gender. Several major battles in these cultural wars will be described. The first battle regards the status of English vis‐à‐vis Latin. Grammarians debated how successfully Latin models could be used to teach, legitimate, or standardize English, resulting in long‐lived tensions between prescriptive and descriptive grammars. A second battle pitted “good grammar” against “good writing,” as some grammarians insisted that all writing be grammatically correct, while others emphasized style and eloquence. A prolonged third battle was over the nature of “universal grammar.” Seventeenth‐century grammarians could not agree on a language scheme, whereas eighteenth‐century grammarians tried instead to identify universal systems that could be applied to English. In a fourth battle, grammarians debated how grammar could regulate the speech and therefore power of such marginal groups as foreigners, women, and the middle class.

2 The Status of English vis‐à‐vis Latin

By the mid‐seventeenth century the status of English as the language of the educated centered ...