The Hidden Politics of Grammar

Unveiling Discourses of American Identity in a Corpus of Historical American Grammar Writing
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-20918-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 286 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics

The Hidden Politics of Grammar is a thorough investigation into a corpus of historical American grammar texts, revealing how their linguistic choices decisively contributed to the creation and maintenance of an explicitly American identity.

Drawing on a newly compiled corpus of 18th and 19th-century American grammars of English (HistAGram), this study challenges the perception of these texts as neutral instructional materials. Instead, spelling conventions, lexical choices, and recurring themes of patriotism and shared heritage demonstrate the texts’ political nature because they reflect and replicate their authors’ national beliefs and ideologies. Du Bois employs a mixed methods approach, combining methodologies from historical corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and network analysis. The research also introduces a comparative dimension through a parallel analysis of the HeidelGram corpus and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), exploring how both British and American grammars similarly construct their respective national sentiments.

This monograph is essential reading for researchers in corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and American studies. It will also be of interest to scholars in education history, publishing history, and political discourse studies.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Du Bois, Sophie A. L.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction 2. Historical Grammars of English–A Mirror of Ideologies? 3. The Notion of American National Identity 4. Constructing the Corpus of Historical American Grammars (HistAGram) 5. A Mixed Methods Approach to Grammar Discourse 6. An Analysis of Onomastic References 7. Branding America as a Nation 8. A Call to Shared Heritage and Beliefs 9. Delineating Historical American Grammar Writing 10. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Sophie A. L. Du Bois is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cologne, Germany.