Rhetoric Review Oct 2002

Class(ifying) Language: The War of the Word

David Borkowski

Abstract

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the study of English was accelerating rapidly. At this time linguistic theories identified which members of society warranted inclusion in the political process. Conservative men of letters, like Samuel Johnson, claimed the lower and middle classes lacked cultural capital. To counter this linguistic class-ification, William Cobbett published A Grammar of the English Language, an enormously popular text meant to teach laborers how to write. Mostly neglected as a "grammarian" or rhetorician today, Cobbett was in fact a forerunner to current linguistic trends that stress literacy's social and political formulations.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2002-10-01
DOI
10.1207/s15327981rr2104_3
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
grammar and mechanics literacy studies
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (73) · 1 in this index

  1. Aarsleff, Hans. "The Original Plan of the Dictionary." The OED and the State of the Language. Ed. Hans Aarsle…
  2. Aarsleff, Hans. The Study of Language in England, 1780-1860. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1967.
  3. Adamson, John Williams. English Education, 1789-1902. London: Cambridge UP, 1930.
  4. Altick, Richard. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago: …
  5. Barrell, John. English Literature in History, 1730-1790: An Equal Wide Survey. London: Hutchinson, 1983.
Show all 73 →
  1. Bisseret, Noelle. Education, Class Language and Ideology. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1979.
  2. Blair, Hugh. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. New York, 1817.
  3. Blake, N. F. A History of the English Language. New York: New York UP, 1996.
     ↗
  4. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. New York: Riverhead, 1994.
  5. Bonnstein, Diane D. Readings in the Theory of Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1976.
  6. Boswell, James. The Life of Johnson. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1934.
  7. Boulton, James. The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1963.
  8. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.
  9. Bourdieu, Pierre: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.
  10. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic, 1977.
  11. Buchannan, James. An Essay Towards Establishing a Standard Grammar. Philadelphia, 1780.
  12. Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.
  13. Burnett, James (Lord Monboddo). Of the Origin and Progress of Language. 6 vols. Edinburgh, 1787.
  14. Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels & Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760-1830. Oxford: …
  15. Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1988.
  16. Cobbett, William. A Grammar of the English Language. New York, 1818.
  17. Cobbett, William. The Opinions of William Cobbett. Ed. G. D. H. Cole. London: Cobbett Publishing, 1944.
  18. Cone, Carl B. The English Jacobins. New York: Scribner's, 1968.
  19. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998.
     ↗
  20. Crowley, Sharon "Around 1970: Current-Traditional Rhetoric and Process Models in Composition." Composition in…
  21. Cuban, Larry. How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890-1980. New York: Longman, 1984.
  22. Curme, George O. A Grammar of the English Language. New York: Heath, 1931.
  23. Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. New York: Norton, 1991.
  24. Downey, Charlotte. "Introduction." A Short Introduction to English Grammar. Robert (Bishop) Lowth. Delmar, NY…
     ↗
  25. Donald James (1983)
    10.1177/002205748316500105
    Journal of Education  ↗
  26. Drake, Nathan. "Essays Illustrative of the 'Rambler,' 'Adventurer,' and 'Idler.'" Johnson: The Critical Herit…
  27. Edelsky Carole (1994)
    10.58680/la199425197
    Language Arts  ↗
  28. Farber, Jerry. The Student as Nigger. New York: Pocket, 1970.
  29. Finegan, Edward. "Style and Standardization in England: 1700-1900." English in its Social Contexts. Ed. Tim W…
  30. Foucault, Michel. "The Discourse on Language." The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. New …
  31. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1994.
  32. Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon, 1926.
  33. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993.
  34. Gilyard Keith (2000)
    10.2307/358496
    College Composition and Communication (  ↗
  35. Horner (2001)
    "Students' Right," English Only, and Re-Imagining the Politics of Language
    College English
  36. Illich, Ivan D. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper, 1970.
  37. Jencks, Christopher. Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America. New York: B…
  38. Johnson, Samuel. The Plan of the Dictionary. Menston, England: Scholar Press, Limited, 1970.
  39. Johnson, Samuel "Preface." A Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1860.
  40. Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the Poets. (Vol. I) London, 1890.
  41. Kernan, Alvin. Printing, Technology, Letters, and Samuel Johnson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987.
  42. Kohl, Herbert. The Open Classroom: A Practical Guide to a New Way of Teaching. New York: Vintage, 1969.
  43. Kozol, Jonathan. Death at an Early Age. Boston: Houghton, 1967.
  44. Leith, Dick. A Social History of English. London: Routledge, 1997.
  45. Lowth, Robert (Bishop). A Short Introduction to English Grammar. Delmar, NY: Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, 1979.
  46. Macrorie, Ken. Uptaught. New York: Hayden, 1970.
  47. More, Hannah. Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. London, 1810.
  48. Roberts, Paul. Modern Grammar. New York: Harcourt, 1967.
  49. Sheridan, Thomas. A Complete Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1790.
  50. Shor Ira (1997)
    10.37514/JBW-J.1997.16.1.08
    Journal of Basic Writing 16.1 (  ↗
  51. Shor, Ira.: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration 1969-1984. Boston: Routledge, 1986.
  52. Silberman, Charles E. Crisis in the Classroom. New York: Random, 1970.
  53. Smith, Olivia. The Politics of Language, 1791-1819. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984.
  54. Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin & Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Boston: Houghton, 1977.
  55. Spring, Joel H. Education and the Rise of the Corporate State. Boston: Beacon, 1971.
  56. Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1986.
  57. Street, Brian. Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy Development, Ethnography, and Education. Ha…
  58. Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage, 1966.
  59. Thompson, John B. "Introduction." Language and Symbolic Power. Pierre Bourdieu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.
     ↗
  60. Tooke, John Horne. Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley. London, 1857.
  61. Trimbur John (2000)
    10.2307/358493
    College Composition and Communication 52.2 (  ↗
  62. Tucker, Susie I. Protean Shape: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Vocabulary and Usage. London: Athlone, 1967.
  63. Webb, R. K. The British Working Class Reader: 1790-1848, Literacy and Social Tension. London: George Allen an…
  64. Wickwar, W. H. The Struggle for the Freedom of the Press, 1819-1822. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1928.
  65. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.
  66. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus, 1961.
     ↗
  67. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. 1958. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.
  68. Wordsworth, William. Selected Poems and Prefaces. Boston: Houghton, 1965.
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Written Communication Jan 2026
    The Contributions of Student-Level and Classroom-Level Factors for Australian Grade 2 Students’ Writing Performance ↗
    Anabela Malpique; Mustafa Asil; Deborah Pino-Pasternak; Debora Valcan
    writing pedagogy teacher development revision grammar and mechanics literacy studies gender and writing
  2. Assessing Writing Jan 2026
    How reliable and valid is peer evaluation in adolescents’ L2 argumentative writing? ↗
    Albert W. Li; Steve Graham
    writing pedagogy teacher development argument assessment multilingual writers grammar and mechanics literacy studies
  3. Written Communication Oct 2025
    Seeing Images, Reading Hieroglyphs: A Reassessment of the Functions of Nonalphabetic Writing and Literacy in Old Kingdom Egypt ↗
    Maria Victoria Almansa-Villatoro
    multimodality grammar and mechanics literacy studies
  4. Research in the Teaching of English May 2025
    “[Writing]’s Like in a Hot Car Finally Opening the Window”: Humanizing Writing Instruction through Noticing in Fourth-Grade Language Arts ↗
    Mary Neville; Maria Martin-Diemer
    writing pedagogy grammar and mechanics literacy studies
  5. The Peer Review Apr 2025
    Snapshots from Before a Revolution: A Talking Picture Book About AI in the Hendrix College Writing Center ↗
    Felipe Pruneda Sentíes; Owen K. Edgington; Eden E. Robbins; Sable Alysse; Katherine L. Scalzo
    modern rhetorical theory african american rhetorics first-year composition graduate education writing centers multimodality artificial intelligence grammar and mechanics literacy studies