Codification, Canons and Curricula

Language, literature and culture develop according to different sets of rules, and it is the task of linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies to describe both the regularities and the changes in these fields. On the one hand, this description unearths standardization mechanisms that influence practical language application and aesthetic production. On the other hand, although normative and prescriptive statements tend to be avoided to a large extent in the descriptively-aligned philological disciplines, these fields of academic study still contribute to standardization. They implicitly or explicitly define the standards for the 'correct' usage of language or 'good' aesthetic design, for example in reference materials and with the help of other instruments and institutions. Moreover, they contribute to the perpetuation of standards by way of their influence on the curricula of schools and universities. The goal of the present volume is to examine the developments and functions of such prescriptive and descriptive tendencies by comparing the similarities and differences in the philological sub-disciplines (linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies, as well as didactics) and their respective subject matters. Several theoretical approaches, models and methods are presented by specialists from different disciplines, opening up new perspectives for further inter- and transdisciplinary research and new vistas on school and university curricula.

InhaltsangabeAnne Schröder, Ralf Schneider and Ulrich Busse: Description and Prescription in Language and Literature: Introductory Remarks Part I: Setting the Scene: Codifications and Canons - Historical Background and Parameters Ulrich Busse and Anne Schröder: What Exactly is 'Standard English'? Ralf Schneider: Codification, Descriptivism and Prescriptivism in British Literary History Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Codifying the English Language Claudia Claridge: Registers, Genres and the Standard: Some Thoughts on the Corpus-linguistic Documentation of the 18th Century Helge Nowak: Canons, Curricular Conventions, and the Literary History of Britain and Ireland Part II: Authorities and Institutions - Practices of Description and Prescription Sabine VolkBirke: The Literary Critic as an Institution MarieLuise Egbert: Translation and Canon Formation Stefanie Preuss: The Canon of a Stateless Nation: Practices of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland Barbara Frank-Job: Codification and Linguistic Norms in Romance Languages Charlotte Brewer: Dictionary-Making, Usage, Literature and the Classics: The Unhappy Fate of Oxford's Quarto Dictionary 1925-1958 Joan Beal: New Authorities and the 'New Prescriptivism' Part III: Expanding the Canons, Testing the Norms Stephan Gramley: General Non-Standard English: The Covert ENL Norm Claudia Lange: Postcolonial Englishes: From Norms to Standards Pam Peters: Usage Guides and Australian English: Prescription and Description Eva Ulrike Pirker: New Canons in the Making: Creating Visual 'Archives' of Black Britain Andrea Moll: Orthographic Practices in Diasporic Jamaican Online Communities: Between Idiosyncratic Usage and 'Grassroots' Conventionalisation Rolf Lohse: Testing the Norms: Humour as a 'Harmless' Transgression Part IV: Teaching the Norms - Influences of Description and Prescription on the Curriculum Claus Gnutzmann: Teaching English in a Globalised World: Does it Make a Difference? Augustin Simo Bobda: Teaching (Standard) English in an ESL and EFL Context: The Case of Cameroon Laurenz Volkmann: From University Curriculum to School Curriculum: Observations on a Troubled Relationship Markus Bieswanger: Varieties of English in the Curriculum Biographical Notes on the Authors