Name: Bad English
ISBN: 9780399165573

Ammon Shea

The editor and dictionary collector behind Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages offers an entertaining look at the words and phrases commonly used in modern English that were originally considered wrong, slang or impolite.

A History of Linguistic Aggravation

Bad English

Arianna M

I can't tell you how many times this book has made me laugh out loud. I utterly loved it.

Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation belongs to the genre of learned exposition, although the language used is only occasionally academic. This book takes the reader on a journey through English language usage, and specifically which usages are or were considered "bad" English. Its pedagogic aim is aided by a conversational, at times quite informal style, which never takes away from the primary informational concern of the text. As the author himself states in the introduction, the intentional avoidance of jargon whenever possible makes the book appropriate and enjoyable for readers of any background.

Shea sets the tone of the book from its very first sentence in the introduction, featuring vivid metaphorical images and irony ("the blood of a freshly wounded language"). The second sentence presents the informal verb "peeved", meaning "to irritate", again functioning as a sort of statement as to what the reader can expect from the book. The author then sets about explaining clearly the aim of his work, which is the presentation of a history of English words commonly considered "mistakes" by more prescriptive speakers, who retain a largely conservative view of language as immutable — a view Shea does not share. The introduction ends with a Note On Terminology, followed by a Note On Pronouns, announcing the use of the third-person neuter singular they to refer to any single persons of either sex; this is followed by a brief Note On Notes.

Chapter One: Arguing Semantics discusses nine examples of words which have shifted in meaning in ways that have been strongly opposed by dogmatic defenders of the English language. Each subsection dedicated to one of these words opens with two quotes: one arguing against the semantic shift of the word discussed, the other either arguing in favour of it, or more commonly directly using it in speech or writing. These quotes can be from different authors, or the same, and often the quote arguing against the semantic shift dates from several years later than the usage quote. Sources vary from blog posts to famous speeches to classic novels. The words discussed are hopefully, literally, disinterested/uninterested, decimate, enormity, enervate, aggravate, unique. The title of the book makes use of the more controversial meaning of aggravate, denoting the author's stance on the topic from the cover itself.

Chapter Two: Words That Are Not Words opens with a discussion of "artificial" neologisms, created by single people trying to express a particular meaning; these are scofflaw, but also skycap, undefendable, as well as staycation, and more. The chapter goes on to discuss other such words which have been introduced to the language: belittle, balding, stupider, irregardless.

Chapter Three: Verbing Nouns is about the productive yet controversial morphological process of zero-derivation, or conversion, through the examples of impact, finalize, contact.

Chapter Four: Sins of Grammar deals with controversies around the topics of splitting infinitives (using Star Trek's famous "to boldly go" as an example), the various uses of "different than", but and and used at the beginning of sentences, fun as an adjective rather than a noun, the use of that instead of which (or vice-versa) in relative clauses, ending a sentence with a preposition, the use of very, the confusion around I vs. me in sentences such as "It is I", "Between you and I" (hypercorrection), "I'm good".

Chapter Five: The Continuing Deterioration of the Language humorously takes on different ways in which English is changing, which to some who see all change as decline is cause for aggravation; it discusses the history of misuse of the apostrophe, the spelling of "potato(e)", discussion of "textspeak, emoticons" and initialisms especially in digital contexts, "ain't", leg vs. limb, donate, like.

Chapter Six: Defending English opens with a section titled "English vs. Latin", followed by "An English Academy", "Shakespeare's Language", brief essays on the history of English.

Chapter Seven: 221 Words That Were Once Frowned Upon, lists 221 words and a brief quote contrasting a particular (now accepted) use of it.

Bad English A History of Linguistic Aggravation

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