Norms and Margins of English

Linda Pilliere (1) , Wilfrid Andrieu (1) , Valérie Kerfelec (1) , Diana M. Lewis (1)

1 LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone

When the editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary decided in 2007 to delete nature words such as acorn, conker, dandelion, otter and willow to make room for blog, broadband, chatroom, MP3 player and voice-mail, there was a public outcry. Eight years later, indignation was still being voiced, with a letter of protest signed by wellknown writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Morton and Ruth Padel. Such a reaction is far from being exceptional.

Keywords: descriptivism; prescriptivism; margin; norm; standardisation

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Linguistics

Linda Pilliere, Wilfrid Andrieu, Valérie Kerfelec, Diana M. Lewis. Norms and Margins of English. Cambridge University Press. Standardising English: Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language, , pp.3-21, 2018, 9781108120470. ⟨10.1017/9781108120470.001⟩. ⟨hal-01995841⟩