Strange Vernaculars: How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English

by Janet Sorensen

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How vocabularies once associated with outsiders became objects of fascination in eighteenth-century Britain

While eighteenth-century efforts to standardize the English language have long been studied-from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary to grammar and elocution books of the period-less well-known are the era's popular collections of odd slang, criminal argots, provincial dialects, and nautical jargon. Strange Vernaculars delves into how these published works presented the supposed lexicons of the "common people" and traces the ways that these languages, once shunned and associated with outsiders, became objects of fascination in printed glossaries-from The New Canting Dictionary to Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar...

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  • ISBN10 0691210748
  • ISBN13 9780691210742
  • Publish Date 8 September 2020 (first published 6 June 2017)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Princeton University Press
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 352
  • Language English