Lecture 1 Introduction

Normalisation of the English Language
Normalisation is the fixing of the norms and standards of a language to protect it from corruption and change.

Type of Standard	Written Standard	Spoken Standard
Time Limits	by the 17^th c.	end of the 18^th c.
Sources	Language of Chaucer (the London Dialect)	private letters; speech of characters in drama; references to speech be scholars.
Peculiarities	1. less stabilised than at later stage; 2. wide range of variation (spelling, gr. forms, syntactical patterns, choice of words, etc. ); 3. rivalry with Latin in the field of science, philosophy, didactics.	1. As spoken standard the scholars considered the speech of educated people taught at school as “correct English”. This was the speech of London and that of Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

The normalisation of the English language started in the 17^th – 18^th c. In 1710 Jonathan Swift published in his journal “The Tatler” an article titled “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue”. J. Swift was a purist (struggled for the purity of the language) and suggested that a body of scholars should gather to fix the rules of the language usage.

The Normalisation of the English language consisted in publishing:

1.