‘Practised among the common people’

‘Vulgar’ Pronunciations in Eighteenth-Century Pronouncing Dictionaries

Bibliographic Data

ID21695276
AuthorsJoan C Beal (0000-0001-7287-8793, University of Sheffield, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume27
Issue3
Pages447-467
Publication date2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Language and Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6743 • E-ISSN: 1469-4379
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1360674323000308
OpenAlexW4385795163
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

In a corpus compiled from the notes in John Walker's pronouncing dictionary (first edition 1791), Trapateau (2016) found that the most frequently occurring evaluative term used was vulgar. In Walker's dictionary, vulgar is defined as ‘plebeian, suiting to the common people, practised among the common people, mean, low, being of the common rate; publick, commonly bruited’ (1791, s.v. vulgar ). The frequency of this term in Walker's critical notes suggests that the role of his dictionary was to warn against unacceptable pronunciations as well as to provide an account of acceptable or, to use Walker's second most frequent term, polite ones. In this article, I discuss some of the pronunciations labelled vulgar by Walker and other eighteenth-century authors and argue that, far from dismissing such evidence as prescriptive, we should consider the role played by Walker and his contemporaries in the enregisterment of stigmatised variants and varieties

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Politeness · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOI