"To Purify the dialect of the tribe": Modernism and Language Reform

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight¹

1. Projects of Language Reform

The concern of this article is language, and specifically the various projects of linguistic "purification" that were part of literary modernism in Britain. It will explore a range of texts and projects concerned with reforming spoken and written forms of English and will argue that modernist cultural practice can be understood in relation to an aspiration towards linguistic reform, not simply in the sense of aesthetic innovation and experiment, but also in the context of educational, cultural, and political initiatives designed to transform linguistic usage and norms.

Projects of language reform are not, of course, distinctively modernist, though they do have some claim to be distinctively modern. If the development of the printing press from the late fifteenth century is one of the foundations of modernity, it is in its immediate wake that we find the first concerted efforts at language reform, with the period between 1560 and 1630 seeing "an unparalleled amount of activity in the field of spelling reform in English."² With the decline of Latin as an international language in the seventeenth century, there was then a growing anxiety about the suitability of the English language as a medium for general philosophical and scientific inquiry. Thus, the Royal Society set up a committee for improving the English language in 1664, which was to include among its members Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton and John Dryden. And in the eighteenth century both the acerbic wit of Jonathan Swift and the obsessive scholarship of Samuel Johnson were trained on the target of precise and correct usage of the English language: Johnson's 1755 Dictionary aimed to provide precise definitions of words "in the context of an academic attention to the possibilities of a perfect English language."³ Such desires for precision and correctness coupled with fears of linguistic dilution are thus not recent phenomena, but can be found within cultural criticism from the early-modern period.

The urgency and the perceived importance of linguistic reform in Britain increased markedly, however, as English became a more prominent international language for intellectual argument and for scientific inquiry, and then again as the literate public expanded over the course of the nineteenth century. The extension of compulsory elementary education across the nineteenth century to the point of universal provision brought the challenges of new readers and new modes of writing, but it also created an institutional location, the elementary school, in which projects of reform could be imagined and even realized. By the early years of the twentieth century, the capacity of the English language to enable precise and widespread communication, to articulate forms of national identity, and to sustain intellectual and artistic innovations were all the subject of intense debate. And these political, cultural, and pedagogical questions interact intriguingly with the avant-garde and radical political and artistic projects from this period that we have come to understand under the heading of "modernism."

Concern for and with the English language was expressed by the formation of a wide range of societies and associations in the early twentieth century, which aimed to publicize their anxieties and to advocate possible remedies for the perceived defects of the English language. One of these organizations was the Society for Pure English, whose early membership consisted of prominent writers and literary critics, including Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton, Robert Bridges, A. C. Bradley, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. To quote from their 1913 founding Prospectus:

It is therefore proposed that a few men of letters, supported by the scientific alliance of the best linguistic authorities, should form a group or free association, and agree upon a modest and practical scheme for informing popular taste on sound principles, for guiding educational authorities, and for introducing into practice certain slight modifications and advantageous changes.⁴

"Men of letters" are here understood to have a particular responsibility for the state of English and also to have a specific duty to inform, and...