1380984377.3491A History of English Language

A history of the english language 372
That the various modifications of the English language in the United States were all
“gross corruptions” was a belief vigorously expressed by an anonymous writer of 1800 in
The Monthly Magazine and American Review. The article “On the Scheme of an
American Language” contains an ironical reference to those who “think grammars and
dictionaries should be compiled by natives of the country, not of the British or English,
but of the American tongue.” After thus paying respects to Webster, the author states the
conviction that for their standard of language Americans must look to “the best educated
class, whose dialect is purified by intimate intercourse with English books.”
Pickering, whose Vocabulary of Americanisms has been mentioned above, begins his
introductory essay with the statement: “The preservation of the English language in its
purity throughout the United States is an object deserving the attention of every
American, who is a friend to the literature and science of his country.” This seems
general enough, but after quoting several pages of extracts from English journals in
condemnation of Americanisms, he adds that the language of the United States “has in so
many instances departed from the English standard, that our scholars should lose no time
in endeavouring to restore it to its purity, and to prevent future corruption.” In 1835 an
unknown writer in the Southern Literary Messenger looked forward (none too hopefully)
to the time when “we shall no longer see such a term as firstly in a work on metaphysics,
nor hear such a double adverb as illy on the floor of Congress—no longer hear of an
event’s transpiring, before it has become public, nor of an argument being predicated on
such and such facts.” He stated that the only safeguard against such licenses was the
adoption of some common and acknowledged standard. “Such a standard exists in the
authorized classics of Great Britain.” The famous “Index Expurgatorius” of William
Cullen Bryant has often been cited as an example of the purist ideal in journalism. It is a
list of words that he excluded from the New York Evening Post and that seems to have
grown up gradually during the years (1829–1878) when he was the editor of this wellknown
newspaper. Many of the expressions he disliked “bear the stamp of vulgarity,
pretension, haste, and slang,” but the only objection to some of them, such as dutiable,
presidential, lengthy (defended by Webster fifty years before), seems to have been the
fact that they were Americanisms. A purist of a rather extreme type was Richard Grant
White. In his books called Words and Their Uses (1870) and Every-Day English (1880)
conformity to the purist ideal and acceptance of the English standard of usage become
practically synonymous. In the preface to the former book he specifically disavows any
right of Americans “to set up an independent standard.” His opinion carried much weight
with a certain class of people, a class possessed of a fine, if somewhat old-fashioned,
culture. Such people are likely to have the point of view of the purist and to be more or
less constantly influenced by English literary tradition.
With the establishment during the previous century and the flourishing during the
present of a modern tradition in American literature, the authority of English opinion and
usage has diminished. Sentiments favoring prescriptivism persist, however, and the purist
ideal continues to find expression in the popular press and in lexicographical enterprises.
When the Merriam Company published Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in
1961, an outpouring of reviews ignored the considerable merits of the dictionary to
criticize its restraint in legislating on matters of usage. The inclusion of finalize and
normalcy without statements of their acceptability and of irregardless (though it was