Vulgarism
In the study of language and
Classicism
The English word "vulgarism" derives ultimately from
Social class
Vulgarism has been a particular concern of
a peculiarity which intrudes itself into Standard English, and is of such a nature as to be associated with the speech of vulgar or uneducated speakers. The origin of pure vulgarisms is usually that they are importations, not from a regional but from a class dialect—in this case from a dialect which is not that of a province, but of a low or uneducated social class. ... [A vulgarism] is usually a variety of Standard English, but a bad variety.[6]
The moral and aesthetic values explicit in such a definition depends on class hierarchy viewed as authoritative.[5] For instance, the "misuse" of aspiration (H-dropping, such as pronouncing "have" as "'ave") has been considered a mark of the lower classes in England at least since the late 18th century,[5][7][8] as dramatized in My Fair Lady. Because linguistic vulgarism betrayed social class, its avoidance became an aspect of etiquette. In 19th-century England, books such as The Vulgarisms and Improprieties of the English Language (1833) by W. H. Savage, reflected upper-middle-class anxieties about "correctness and good breeding".[7]
Vulgarisms in a literary work may be used deliberately to further characterization,[1]: 39 [2][7] by use of "eye dialect" or simply by vocabulary choice.
See also
- Barbarism (linguistics)
- Disputes in English grammar
- Euphemism
- Grotesque body
- Heteroglossia
- Linguistic purism
- Solecism
- Vernacular
References
- ^ a b Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha (Brill, 1993), pp. 27, 39–40, 243.
- ^ a b J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language, pp. 300–301, 765, et passim
- ^ Social Variation and the Latin Language (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 3–5.
- ^ Andrew Laird, Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 250.
- ^ a b c Tony Crowley, Language in History: Theories and Texts (Routledge, 1996), pp. 168–169.
- ^ Henry Wyld, as quoted by Crowley (1996) p. 169.
- ^ a b c Manfred Görlach, English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 57
- ^ Ossi Ihalainen, "The Dialects of English since 1776", in The Cambridge History of the English Language (Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. 5, pp. 216–217.