The Ideology of Spoken English in English Grammaticography

Abstract

It is widely and uncontroversially believed that English grammaticography has almost exclusively focused on written language, ignoring the distinctive features of spoken English. Even when spoken language features have been described, an ideological view of spoken English has led grammarians to place more emphasis on written language norms. This paper aims to illustrate the findings of a grammaticographical investigation into the grammar of spoken English as conceived of and presented in a restricted corpus of Italian grammars of English authored by academics and published between the second half of the 19th and the mid-20th centuries. The textual and paratextual materials in the grammars were analysed in order to ascertain whether the presentation of traditional ‘prescriptive’ rules accounts for less formal and spoken usage, what—if any—phenomena of spoken grammar are dealt with and whether evaluative terms are used with regard to spoken English. The results of the analysis show that the authors of the Italian grammar books were able to push the boundaries of pedagogical grammaticography, placing an increasingly greater emphasis on the role of spoken usage in the description of the English language.

Keywords

• spoken grammar
• history of English language teaching
• teaching of spoken English
• English grammaticography
• teaching English as a second/foreign language