Linguistic purism in English

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Purism in the linguistic field is the historical trend of languages to conserve intact their lexical structure of word families, in opposition to foreign influences which are considered 'impure'. Historically, English linguistic purism is a reaction to the great number of borrowings in the English language from other languages, especially Old French, since the Norman conquest of England, and some of its native vocabulary and grammar have been supplanted by features of Latinate and Greek origin.[1] Efforts to remove or consider the removal of foreign terms in English are often known as Anglish, a term coined by author and humorist Paul Jennings in 1966.[2]

English linguistic purism has persisted in diverse forms since the inkhorn term controversy of the early modern period. In its mildest form, purism stipulates the use of native terms instead of loanwords. In stronger forms, new words are coined from Germanic roots (such as wordstock for vocabulary) or revived from older stages of English (such as shrithe for proceed). Noted purists of Early Modern English include John Cheke,[3] Thomas Wilson,[4] Ralph Lever,[5] Richard Rowlands,[6] and Nathaniel Fairfax.[7] Modern linguistic purists include William Barnes,[1] Charles Dickens,[8] Gerard Manley Hopkins,[9] Elias Molee,[10] Percy Grainger,[11] and George Orwell.[12]

  1. ^ a b R.L.G. (28 January 2014). "Johnson: What might have been". The Economist. Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  2. ^ Bidwell, Lili (25 March 2017). "Anglish: A Brexiteer's lingua franca?". The Cambridge Student. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  3. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica. "Sir John Cheke". Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  4. ^ Rhode Island College. "Texts from the Inkhorn Debate, c. 1560–1640". Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  5. ^ Sgarbi, Marco (2013). "Ralph Lever's Art of Reason, Rightly Termed Witcraft (1573)". Bruniana & Campanelliana. 19 (1): 149–163. JSTOR 24338444. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  6. ^ Morsbach, Lorenz (1910). Studien zur englischen Philologie. Halle a.S., Max Niemeyer. p. 123.
  7. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). "Fairfax, Nathaniel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9088. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 25 January 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ^ Lynne, Murphy (2018). The Prodigal Tongue. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1524704889.
  9. ^ Roper, Jonathan (April 2012). "English Purisms". Victoriographies. 2 (1). Edinburgh University Press: 44–59. doi:10.3366/vic.2012.0059. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  10. ^ Molee, Elias (1890). Pure Saxon English, Or, Americans to the Front. Rand McNally.
  11. ^ Gillies, M. (2019). "Percy Grainger: How American was He?". Nineteenth-Century Music Review. 16 (1). Cambridge University Press: 9–26. doi:10.1017/S1479409817000568. S2CID 187266648. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  12. ^ Poole, Steven (17 January 2013). "My problem with George Orwell". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 January 2021.