English Language Standardization Essay

English language standardization is a standard form of written English which has been established in England, that standard is always evolving and as English has spread around the world, several different varieties of English now exist. It’s also stress that the stages of standardization need to be successive and may extend over , and that the process involved in the implementation of a standard English are ongoing as successive generation attempt to suppress the variability which is the inventible result of linguistic change . Samuel Johnson dictionary (1755) is named by the dictionary of Standard English which became a model and standard of English in America and England. The dictionaries before Johnson were just a list

In which early grammarians were focused on fixing the English language. 18 century lexicographers planned to slow the changes in language so the coming generation will be able to read English. The use of local language increased excessively during the 18 century although Johnson dictionary helped in stabilize the change in language so that the future generations would recognize English language. Besides language was affected by the expansion of empire, globalization and contact with the other language. This was seen as a natural progress in the language. This flexible attitude change contrasted with more perspective attitude of grammarians who mainly focused on fixing the language. Johnson main task is to arrange semantically and standardize the English language. He has to acclaim the authority to ordain laws on language. Record irregular uses to limit undesirable language habits. He said that every language has similarly its inchoateness and nonsense, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or to forbid. Thus, he shared with the grammarians their concern about language downfall, this will require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and change have until now been suffered to make in it without

Dictionaries in local language, they were just developing from being simple hard word to adopt people who didn’t know the meaning of spelling of a word because the local language was replacing the Latin language. Not only the lexicon hadn’t stabilized but also the lexicography hadn’t been developed as a skill. Virtually works and official business settlement were done in Latin so that the vernacular language is not required. Since English wasn’t the language of the 17 century, Latin was transferred by grammarians and people still looked to grammarians for linguistics decision. Grammar books had an edge over dictionaries in decision making about language. Grammar books contains Latin English word list, while dictionaries contains English listings were still all