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The 18th Century English
In the study of English literature, the first half of the 18th century is often referred to as the Augustan Age in England. It was a period of English prose writing which invariably affected the course of the English language. This age was characterized by a search for stability in language use. There was a strong sense of order and great desire for a system that would enhance efforts towards conformity to certain standards of good writing. There was also a drive towards correctness and attempts were made to formulate rules and principles to define correctness and to achieve correctness. This was characteristic of the spirit of rational science and philosophy that started with the Renaissance. Latin was looked upon as a classical standard for literature. Concerns for English soon began to take a new turn. Questions were then asked whether the language was at all worthy to be used for writing, where Latin had been the tradition; whether the extensive additions being made to the vocabulary were justified, and whether a better system of spelling could be introduced. For the first time, it was discovered that English had no grammar. What was grammar did not follow any generally accepted pattern. The result was that English did not have any rules. People did not know when they were wrong or right. Everything was uncertain. Even among the educated people, there was so much variation on matters of grammar.
Latin remained an authoritative example in which one was told how to use language. People began to feel that this problem could be solved by an English Academy that could legislate on matters of language. The popular idea was that English was being corrupted and needed to be refined and corrected. Necessary reforms should be in place after which the language should be fixed permanently and protected from regular changes.
In a nutshell, the 18th century sought to:
(i) reduce the language to rule and set up a standard of current usage; (ii) refine the language – that is, to remove supposed defects and introduce certain improvements; and (iii) fix it permanently in the desired form (Baugh & Cable 2001).
Attempts to Purify the Language
Right from the 17th century, as we have pointed out, people were conscious that English lacked standards - the fact that the language did not have rules to determine right or wrong in its usage. Writers were particularly worried that writing was more of a guesswork; individuals wrote according to their choices of words and how best they felt they could express themselves, not guided by any particular standard. This led to further corruption of the language, as some people thought.
The feeling that English was being corrupted and unchecked gave rise to some attempts to clean up the language and rid it of some supposed imperfections. One of such attempts was Swift’s proposal of 1712, titled: A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. Swift was not comfortable with the spate of scientific inquiry and revolutions that favored careless use of language. Innovations such as clipping and shortening of words like mob, taxi, rep or phone were not acceptable to Swift. A later publication Philosophy of Rhetoric by George Campbell (1776) also condemned this practice. In fact, Campbell described it as ‘barbarism’ in language use. Another innovation that Swift opposed was the tendency to contract verbs like ‘rebuk’d,’ ‘disturb’d’ or ‘perturb’d’. He condemned this practice and argued that leaving out a vowel to save a syllable makes such contracted forms very difficult to pronounce. Again, Swift condemned some new words that kept coming into the English language. Words such as sham, banter, mob, bubble, bully, shuffling, or palming, that were becoming the vogue among people of fashion and even among preachers were rejected. As we have pointed out in the earlier Unit, Swift was not alone in the criticism of foreign words. But Swift desired and hoped that like Latin and Greek, English could be rendered stable. But it is a mistaken notion that these languages never had times when they struggled with the process of stability like English at this period.
However, Swift and others who believed that the problems that confronted English - that of standardizing, refining, and ‘fixing’ were to consider what happened in Italy and France. Each of these countries had an academy that defined standards in language and monitored the processes that sustained these standards. Italy, for example, founded the Accademia della Crusca in 1582, that was responsible for the purification of the Italian language. The Academy, to this effect, published in 1612 a dictionary called Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, which had about six volumes by 1738. France similarly established an Academy. The principal functions of the Academy were to give rules to the French language, render it pure and capable of treating the arts and sciences. It was also to compile a dictionary, a grammar, a rhetoric, and a guide on how to write poetry. These were all achieved by 1694. England did not have any Academy that performed similar functions.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
1. Describe the problems that English had, that became prominent in the 18th century. 2. Why did these problems become too obvious in the 18th century?
3.2 An English Academy
An English Academy was then suggested following the Italian and French example. In 1660, a volume was published titled New Atlantis … continued by R.H Esquire. The author formally pictured an academy that would be charged with purifying the English language and regulating its grammar and vocabulary. Not long, the idea of an academy received support from influential intellectuals, including John Dryden (a poet), and John Evelyn among others. Evelyn, who was a member of the Royal society, proposed that a grammar of language be formulated with some spelling reforms to be followed by a collection of all ‘pure’ English words with their meanings. He further suggested collections of technical words, dialects, expressions and archaic words that might be revived and possibly translating some of the best of Greek and Latin literatures as models of elegance and style. Remember that the Royal Society was established for scientific research and had no real interest in language matters, so nothing was done about Evelyn’s proposals. Dryden’s efforts also in this direction did not attract any significant attention.
Towards the end of the century however, Daniel Defoe (a novelist) in his Essay upon Projects (1697) again raised the issue of an English Academy and devoted a whole article to the subjects of academies. Swift’s Proposal of 1712, as we noted earlier, marked the heights of the movement for an English Academy. Already public opinion had been in its favor following the efforts of Dryden, Evelyn and others, for more than fifty years. Once again the idea of an Academy suffered a setback following a publication of Reflections on Dr Swift’s Letter to the Earl of Oxford about the English Tongue by John Oldmixon, in the same year that Swift’s Proposal appeared.
Oldmixon (a lawyer) writing in the name of the legal profession totally attacked the idea of standardizing the language, arguing that it was impossible to prevent a language from responding to change. While he did not protest against the idea of an Academy, he ridiculed the person of Swift and his proposal and nothing subsequently came out of Swift’s Proposal, which was indeed the closest England ever came to having an Academy. Subsequent talk of an Academy in England was soon received with skepticism. There were now doubts about the results of the French Academy. Some came to think that the Academy came to fix French but ended up spoiling it. The claim that a language could be fixed was the platform upon which the idea of an Academy was built; now it began to decline, and popular feeling began to favor the notion that nothing can stop a language from changing, not even Latin or Greek could resist change.
When it was clear that Swift’s Proposal had failed, the only means was to work out a substitute for an academy, and that would demand working directly on the public. Individuals sought to provide reforms that they believed necessary and to set up standards that would be accepted by everybody. Thus, in 1724, an anonymous publication appeared under the title: The Many Advantages of a Good Language to Any Nation: with an Examination of the Present State of our Own. This re-echoed the old complaints that English was full of too many monosyllables, used too many contractions, and had no adequate grammar or dictionary. It then called upon the public to take part in the discussion on matters of language and proposed a series of weekly or monthly publications on grammar and other topics on language. Some other publications also emerged calling for reforms on grammar and spelling.
All these publications identified two greatest needs of the English language: (i) standard grammar (ii) a dictionary. The need for a dictionary was met by Johnson’s dictionary of 1755, and the one of grammar by early grammarians in the latter part of the 18th century. The latter shall be discussed in Unit 3 of Module 2.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
1. Discuss the factors that favored the proposal for the establishment of an English Academy. 2. Explain the reasons why Swift’s Proposal failed. 3. What substitutes were adopted for an academy?
3.3 Johnson’s Dictionary
Dr. Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 was the first of its kind to exhibit English vocabulary in a more fully and extensive manner. It offered quotations to illustrate the use of words. Thus, it became the first dictionary to record language usage. And this was to aid understanding where the explaining of meanings became inadequate. The dictionary also gave a guide to pronunciation. The purpose of this dictionary was not just to provide a kind of standard in spelling and use of words, it was, according to the author to refine the
English language and ensure grammatical purity; to clear it from colloquial barbarism, licentious idioms, and irregular idioms” (Baugh & Cable 2001: 273). At another place, he said it was to fix the English language, preserve its purity, and ascertain the meaning of English idioms. This was like performing the functions of an Academy; and in fact, the Johnson’s dictionary could compare favorably with similar works of an Academy in France or Italy.
The dictionary, however, had its defects. For instance, it was said to include many words that did not belong to English, and its history of words was not perfect. Some of its explanations of places were incorrect and full of prejudice, and his definitions were sometimes discriminatory. Though laden with its inadequacies, scholars still believed that Johnson’s dictionary is the foundation of all meaningful efforts towards the standardization of the English language. Dr. Samuel Johnson himself is considered the founder of the modern English dictionary.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
1. Describe the features of Johnson’s Dictionary of the 18th century. 2. What faults were leveled against the work?
4.0 CONCLUSION
The position of the 18th-century English was that of uncertainty in grammar and vocabulary. It was the general feeling that English lacked standards and needed a regulatory body. This resulted in the call for an English Academy and some other attempts to fix a standard. When the efforts failed, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary appeared to try to solve the problem of standards in spelling, pronunciation, and language use.
5.0 SUMMARY
The 18th century was an age in search of rules and established standards of spelling and language usage. Efforts to refine the English grammar and remove some supposed defects and improve on it became necessary. A strong thirst to fix the language permanently as a guide to correct usage in both writing and speaking became the preoccupation of language scholars. There was a call for an English Academy that would effectively legislate on matters of language as described above and serve as a watchdog against foreign agents of pollution, following the examples of France and Italy. At the forefront of this call was Swift’s Proposal of 1712. When this proposal failed, individuals adopted other forms of propaganda to win public interest in favor of standards for English and its purity. This was in the form of weekly and monthly publications on matters of language. In 1755, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary appeared that provided for the first time the standard steps to fix the language. The dictionary provided a comprehensive list of English words, a guide to spelling and pronunciation, and a guide to language usage. The dictionary almost served as an Academy by itself and solved one of the greatest problems of English at that time, which was the lack of standards in vocabulary.
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