Describing Prescriptivism

Describing Prescriptivism provides a topical and thought-provoking analysis of linguistic prescriptivism in British and American English, from a historical as well as present-day perspective. Focusing on usage guides and usage problems, the book takes a three-fold approach to present an in-depth analysis of the topic, featuring:

• a detailed study of the advice provided in usage guides over the years;

• an authoritative comparison of this advice with actual usage as recorded in British and American corpora, including the HUGE (Hyper Usage Guide of English) database ¿ developed specifically to enable this line of study ¿ as well as more mainstream corpora such as COCA, COHA and the BNC;

• a close analysis of the attitudes to particular usage problems among the general public, based on surveys distributed online through the "Bridging the Unbridgeable" research project¿s blog.*

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