|
Candidates to Serve as Models |
Their Limitations |
|
The speech of the court: the notion of the 'King's English'
(Queen's English) evolves |
But the speech of the court left a great deal to be desired
in its actual linguistic practices |
|
The Bible had “proved a kind of Standard for Language,
especially to the common People” (Swift) |
But
Puritanism and the other religious movements of the age had
made the Bible’s linguistic authority uncertain, because
there were now many competing translations and different
interpretations of theological terms |
|
The dictionary: John Kersey's New English Dictionary
(1702) contained 28,000 words; Nathaniel Bailey's
Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) had
contained 60,000 by its 1736 edition |
The problem with these earlier dictionaries was that their
definitions lacked illustrative support from prestigious
authors, and that they gave little guidance about usage |
