Table of Contents
Acknowledgements v
1 Introduction 1
Part I A discourse-historical approach to the English native speaker 7
2 The native speaker in contemporary linguistics 9
2.1 So what is the problem with the native speaker? 10
2.2 Defining the native speaker 12
2.3 The native speaker in the World Englishes context 14
2.3.1 Modeling World Englishes 15
2.3.2 The ownership question: Whose English is it? 21
2.4 Approaches to the native speaker: Features or historical construct? 26
2.5 The birth of the English native speaker 31
3 Identities, ideologies, and discourse: Toward a theoretical and methodological framework 33
3.1 Linguistic identities and ideologies 33
3.2 Discourse as a scientific object 35
3.3 Discourse as a linguistic object 37
3.3.1 Linguistic approaches to discourse I: Historical discourse analysis 37
3.3.2 Digression: Late-nineteenth century intertextuality and the notion of the discourse community 40
3.3.3 Linguistic approaches to discourse II: Critical Discourse Analysis 45
3.4 The corpus 50
3.4.1 Socio- and linguistic-historical background 51
3.4.2 Constitution of the corpus 57
3.4.3 A note on quoted material 60
4 The ideologies of Marsh (1859): A close reading 63
4.1 The introduction 64
4.2 Of native speakers, native languages, and native philology 72
4.3 Names for English and its speakers 77
4.4 Summary 88
Part II "Good" English and the "best" speakers: The native speaker and standards of language, speech, and writing 89
5 Defining and delimiting "English" and "standard English" 91
5.1 The native speaker and the standard language in the World Englishes context 94
5.2 Defining a language: Stability and staticity as theoretical and methodological necessities of nineteenth- and twentieth-century linguistics 103
5.2.1 Nineteenth-century attempts at solving the problem of linguistic heterogeneity 105
5.2.2 The "imagination" of standard English through the OED 108
6 The question of standard spoken English and the dialects 113
6.1 From written to spoken standards for English 113
6.1.1 Standard spoken English: Where is it to be found? 117
6.1.2 English = standard English 118
6.1.3 Standard English = educated English 119
6.1.4 Educated speakers are the "best" speakers 120
6.1.5 Can we not define the standard linguistically? 124
6.1.6 "Educated" = public-school educated 126
6.1.7 Of "natural" educated speakers "to the language born" 127
6.1.8 Educated English = a level of excellence which need not be homogenous in reality 129
6.1.9 Colloquial English and the naturalness problem 132
6.2 The standard and the dialects 136
6.2.1 Whence the new interest in the dialects? 136
6.2.2 The Status of the dialects vis-à-vis the standard language 137
6.2.3 The dialects' contribution to the historicization of the standard language: "Primitive" forms and "Anglo-Saxon" words 138
6.2.4 Preservation of the dialects: "Antique curiosities" or actual means of communication? 140
6.2.5 "Genuine" dialect and "authentic" speakers: The emergence of the NORM 143
6.2.6 Rural, traditional dialects vs. new, urban forms of speech 147
7 Spoken vs. written language and the native speaker 153
7.1 Why are there no native writers? 153
7.1.1 The spoken language, the native speaker, and linguistic theory 154
7.1.2 The relationship of speech and writing before the mid-nineteenth century 158
7.1.2.1 The Herderian notion of "Volksstimme" 160
7.1.2.2 Coleridge vs. Wordsworth: "Lingua communis" vs. authentic folk speech 161
7.1.3 The ascendancy of spoken language 164
7.1.3.1 The significance of spoken language in the second half of the nineteenth century: Max Müller's influential Lectures on the Science of Language 166
7.1.3.2 Late nineteenth-century thought on speech and writing 170
7.1.3.3 The late-nineteenth century concern with spelling reform and what it implies for the native speaker 176
7.2 Summary of Part II 179
Part III Language, nation, and race: Of Anglo-Saxons and English speakers conquering the world 183
8 Nationalism, racism, and the native speaker 185
8.1 Nineteenth-century linguistic nationalism 189
8.2 Language and race 193
8.3 Language, nation, and race and the writings of Edward A. Freeman 198
8.4 Language and nation historically: The development of English and its speakers 205
8.4.1 The historical perspective on language, nation, and race: Constructing a venerable history for English 205
8.4.2 R.C. Trench on language as a nation's "moral barometer" 208
9 Anglo-Saxonism and the English native speaker 213
9.1 The rise of Anglo-Saxonism in philology 214
9.2 Anglo-Saxonism in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and the U.S.A. 215
9.2.1 The origins myth: Anglo-Saxons and their religious and political heritage 217
9.2.2 Framing Anglo-Saxonism racially: Of superior and inferior peoples 218
9.2.3 Anglo-Saxonism in America 221
9.2.4 Closing the lines: British and U.S. Anglo-Saxons unite 223
9.3 The development of nationalism in Britain and the U.S. 231
9.3.1 British national identity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 232
9.3.2 The "moment of Englishness" 234
9.3.3 Language and nationalism in the late nineteenth-century U.S.A. 236
10 The Language of the world: In praise of English 241
10.1 English as the greatest language linguistically 242
10.1.1 Vocabulary: Mixed origins 244
10.1.2 English as the great borrowing language 246
10.1.3 English against French 249
10.2 The English-speaking community 251
10.2.1 The numerological tradition: Pride in the number of English speakers worldwide 251
10.2.2 The three C's: Civilization, commerce, and Christianity 254
10.2.3 Of superior and inferior races and the "great law of contact" 257
10.3 Threats to the language 262
10.4 Summary of Part III 271
11 Conclusion 273
References 283
Historical sources 283
Other references 290
Author index 301
Subject index 303