It was an age in search of stability, building off the consensus created by the Royal Society in the 1660s.

Desire for ”a strong sense of order and the value of regulation” (255).

Downplaying of adventurous spirit in language.

Though still venerated, the accomplishments of Greece and Rome, were aiming to be surpassed (256).

187. The Temper of the Eighteenth century

To reduce the language to rule and set up a standard of correct usage

To refine it – to remove defects and introduce certain improvements

To fix it to a desired form permanently.

Lack of standardization blamed for corruption of language.

People saw language in decline and many tried to look back to a “golden age.”

Dryden: it was Chaucer’s age.

Swift: it was Elizabethan Age.

It was felt that the Civil War and afterwards had been all part of a decline.

Opposed innovations

Three major innovations Swift opposed:

The tendency to clip and shorten words that should have retained their full dignity: modern words like phone, ad, incog, extra.

The tendency to contract verbs: drudg’d, disurb’d, rebuk’d.

The “vogue popularity” of certain words among those of wit and fashion: sham, banter, mob, bully.

He attacked all of these in a letter to the Tatler in 1710 and then two years later in his work: Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue.

“Swift talked about ‘fixing’ the language, and the word was echoed for fifty years by lesser writers who shared his desire and, like him, believed in the possibility of realizing it” (261).

Fear of change was not a new fear.

Sir Francis Bacon had expressed it in 1623.

Italy and France had long been places of inspiration for English.

Accademia della Crusca of Italy, founded in 1582 with goal of purifying Italian, published a dictionary in 1612.

This only courted more controversy and went through many editions.

Grounds for objection were:

Language could not be fixed

Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary noted, would bring an end to liberty. Policy of noninterference was more appealing than arbitrary regulation.

Johnson’s influence was very deciding and after his Dictionary, advocacy for academy dies off.

Repeats old complaints of English complicated nature

Sought to stir public interest in matters of language, ”calls upon the public to take part in the discussion, and purposes the publication of a series of weekly or monthly pamphlets on grammar and other linguistic topics” 

Represented 7 years of work.

It had defects, especially by modern standards, but its definitions are generally sound and has its virtues.

More full expression of English vocabulary than ever before.

Fixed spelling and standardization.