The grammar of empire in eighteenth-century British writing
This study, first published in 2000, examines the complex role of language as an instrument of empire in eighteenth-century British literature. Focusing on the relationship between England and one of its 'celtic colonies', Scotland, Janet Sorensen examines how the expansion of the British empire influenced the formation of a national standard English.
X, 318 p. ill. 24 cm
9780521653275, 0521653274
1014744205
Introduction; 1. Scripting identity?: English language and literacy instruction in the Highlands and the strange case of Alexander MacDonald; 2. 'A grammarians regard to the genius of our tongue': Johnson's Dictionary, imperial grammar and the customary national language; 3. Women, Celts and hollow voices: Tobias Smollett's brokering of Anglo-British linguistic identities; 4. The figure of the nation: polite language and its originary other in Adam Smith's and Hugh Blair's Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres; 5. 'A translator without originals': William Shaw's Scots Gaelic and the dialectic of (linguistic) empire; Epilogue: Jane Austen's language and the strangeness at home in the center.