The Fight for English

Download or read book The Fight for English written by David Crystal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-07 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lynne Truss's 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' injected new life into the long-standing arguments over rights and wrongs in English usage. Now David Crystal brings together his own distinctive style and unique expertise to provide the first thorough-going assessment of the ongoing debate. With a lively, humorous, and accessible approach, Crystal charts the battles past and present, illustrating the characters and attitudes involved from a wide range of written sources. He combines a chronological survey of key influences in the area of usage with discussion of particular themes such as punctuation, spelling, and pronunciation. And he looks ahead to the future in the context of recent education policy shifts. A positive and compelling case is made for variation in usage of English based on appropriateness of situation, arguing that 'zero tolerance' in relation to language is a profoundly flawed approach. Crystal offers an original and authoritative counter-argument to the prescriptivist agenda that has been expounded in many accounts of English usage over the years. The Fight for English is the book that everyone concerned with English usage has been eagerly awaiting.