Codification, Canons and Curricula

Description and Prescription in Language and Literature
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-89528-936-1
Verlag: Aisthesis

Buch, Englisch, Band 26, 372 Seiten, PB, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 733 g

Reihe: Bielefelder Schriften zu Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft

Language, literature and culture develop according to different sets of rules, and it is the task of linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies to describe both the regularities and the changes in these fields. On the one hand, this description unearths standardization mechanisms that influence practical language application and aesthetic production. On the other hand, although normative and prescriptive statements tend to be avoided to a large extent in the descriptively-aligned philological disciplines, these fields of academic study still contribute to standardization. They implicitly or explicitly define the standards for the 'correct' usage of language or 'good' aesthetic design, for example in reference materials and with the help of other instruments and institutions. Moreover, they contribute to the perpetuation of standards by way of their influence on the curricula of schools and universities.

The goal of the present volume is to examine the developments and functions of such prescriptive and descriptive tendencies by comparing the similarities and differences in the philological sub-disciplines (linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies, as well as didactics) and their respective subject matters.

Several theoretical approaches, models and methods are presented by specialists from different disciplines, opening up new perspectives for further inter- and transdisciplinary research and new vistas on school and university curricula.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Busse, Ulrich

Schneider, Ralf

Schröder, Anne

Weitere Mitwirkende

Beal, Joan

Bieswanger, Markus

Bobda, Augustin Simo

Brewer, Charlotte

Busse, Ulrich

Claridge, Claudia

Egbert, Marie-Luise

Elspaß, Stephan

Frank-Job, Barbara

Gnutzmann, Claus

Gramley, Stephan

Lange, Claudia

Lohse, Rolf

Maitz, Péter

Moll, Andrea

Nowak, Helge

Peters, Pam

Pirker, Eva Ulrike

Preuss, Stefanie

Schneider, Ralf

Schröder, Anne

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid

Volk-Birke, Sabine

Volkmann, Laurenz

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Anne Schröder, Ralf Schneider and Ulrich Busse: Description and Prescription in Language and Literature: Introductory Remarks

Part I: Setting the Scene: Codifications and Canons - Historical Background and Parameters

Ulrich Busse and Anne Schröder: What Exactly is 'Standard English'?

Ralf Schneider: Codification, Descriptivism and Prescriptivism in British Literary History

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Codifying the English Language

Claudia Claridge: Registers, Genres and the Standard: Some Thoughts on the Corpus-linguistic Documentation of the 18th Century

Helge Nowak: Canons, Curricular Conventions, and the Literary History of Britain and Ireland

Part II: Authorities and Institutions - Practices of Description and Prescription

Sabine Volk-Birke: The Literary Critic as an Institution

Marie-Luise Egbert: Translation and Canon Formation

Stefanie Preuss: The Canon of a Stateless Nation: Practices of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland

Barbara Frank-Job: Codification and Linguistic Norms in Romance Languages

Charlotte Brewer: Dictionary-Making, Usage, Literature and the Classics: The Unhappy Fate of Oxford's Quarto Dictionary 1925-1958

Joan Beal: New Authorities and the 'New Prescriptivism'

Part III: Expanding the Canons, Testing the Norms

Stephan Gramley: General Non-Standard English: The Covert ENL Norm

Claudia Lange: Postcolonial Englishes: From Norms to Standards

Pam Peters: Usage Guides and Australian English: Prescription and Description

Eva Ulrike Pirker: New Canons in the Making: Creating Visual 'Archives' of Black Britain

Andrea Moll: Orthographic Practices in Diasporic Jamaican Online Communities: Between Idiosyncratic Usage and 'Grassroots' Conventionalisation

Rolf Lohse: Testing the Norms: Humour as a 'Harmless' Transgression

Part IV: Teaching the Norms - Influences of Description and Prescription on the Curriculum

Claus Gnutzmann: Teaching English in a Globalised World: Does it Make a Difference?

Augustin Simo Bobda: Teaching (Standard) English in an ESL and EFL Context: The Case of Cameroon

Laurenz Volkmann: From University Curriculum to School Curriculum: Observations on a Troubled Relationship

Markus Bieswanger: Varieties of English in the Curriculum

Biographical Notes on the Authors

Über Autor(innen)

Anne Schröder holds the chair for English Linguistics at Bielefeld University, Germany. She studied English and French at the Université de Caen (France), the University of Bristol (UK), and at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau (Germany), where she received her Dr. phil. in English linguistics. Before taking up her present post, she taught at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and at Chemnitz University of Technology. Her research interests are varieties of English around the world, with a focus on tense and aspect in Cameroon Pidgin English, and morphological productivity. She has also co-authored several papers with Ulrich Busse on aspects of English usage guides.

Ulrich Busse is Full Professor of English Linguistics at Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Over the past twenty years, he has published widely on Anglo-German language contact and its lexicographical description, including a book and a three-volume dictionary on the influence of English on Present-day German. His general interest in lexis and its description is reflected in a number of publications on lexicology and (meta-) lexicography. In English historical linguistics, he has worked on Early Modern English, historical pragmatics and the language of Shakespeare in particular. More recently, he has investigated the role of prescription and description in the codification of English as exemplified in usage manuals.

Ralf Schneider received his PhD from the University of Cologne, then held teaching posts at the universities of Tübingen and Freiburg and has been professor of British Literature and Culture at Bielefeld University since 2005. His fields of research include cognitive theory and criticism, literary theory, the Victorian Era, the war-media-art nexus and narratives of the experience of migration.