Kingsley Amis: The Prescriptivist-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Kingsley Amis: The Prescriptivist

Published:2016-12-01 Issue:1 Volume:13 Page:13-20
ISSN:2286-0428
Container-title:Romanian Journal of English Studies
language:en
Short-container-title:

Author:

Cehan Nadina¹

Affiliation:

1. ”Babeş-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca, PhD student

Abstract

Abstract In The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage, Kingsley Amis identified H. W. Fowler as his great predecessor. Amis revealed himself as a soldier in the army of prescriptivists, voices that settle ‘modern linguistic problems’ while proudly parading as non-linguists. The book exposed Amis’s acrimonious dispute with descriptive linguists, while the writer delivered his very own brand of linguistics to his readers. This paper looks at the success of Amis’s book and its similarities with Fowler’s. It also emphasizes the continuity and popularity of usage handbooks while presenting some of their chief characteristics as exemplified by Amis’s work.

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Link

https://www.sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/rjes-2016-0003

Reference23 articles.

1. Amis, Kingsley. 2011 (1997). The King’s English: A Guide to Modern Usage. London: Penguin Books.

2. Bex, Tony. 1999. “Representations of English in Twentieth-Century Britain: Fowler, Gowers and Partridge”. Standard English: the widening debate. Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (Eds.). London: Routledge, pp. 89-109.

3. Bex, Tony and Richard J. Watts (Eds.). 1999. Standard English: the Widening Debate. London: Routledge.

4. Bookthrift. 2011. Book of the Month: King’s English (Kingsley Amis). [Online]. Available: http://bookthrift.blogspot.ro/2011/06/book-of-month-kings-english-kingsley.html [Accessed 2015, March 25].

5. Chapman, Don. 2008. “The eighteenth-century grammarians as language experts”. Grammars, Grammarians and Grammar-Writing in Eighteenth-Century England. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (Ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp 21-36.