| 词组 | purist |
| 释义 | purist Purist is the most persistent of the many terms used to describe those people who concern themselves with "correct English" or "correct grammar." Among other epithets we find tidier-up, precisian, schoolmarm, grammaticaster, word-worrier, prescriptivist, purifier, logic-chopper (H. W. Fowler's word), grammatical mor-alizer (Otto Jespersen's term for H. W. Fowler), usage-aster, usagist, usager, and linguistic Emily Post. All of these seem at least faintly pejorative, some more than faintly so. Quinn 1980's pop grammarian, also pejorative, is a narrower term that applies chiefly to those commentators who have received wide dissemination through the popular media in the 1970s and 1980s. Ellsworth Barnard's (1979) absolutist is more neutral. Perhaps many purists would prefer to call themselves "conservative"—a term probably borrowed from politics, but here misapplied, since purists are not interested in preserving the language as it is, but in reforming and correcting it to attain a nearer approach to perfection. In politics such an attitude might be characterized as "radical." Perhaps Thomas Love Peacock's term perfectibil-ian (used to describe a school of philosophical and social thought) would be reasonably descriptive. The concern with the improvement, correction, and perfection of the existing language goes back to the 18th century, when the first influential grammars of English were written. There was current at that time a notion that a perfect language existed, at least in theory, and that reformation of the imperfect way existing language was used would lead to that perfection. The way in which reformation and correction were to be attained was through cerebration—one used reasoning and analogy (especially to Latin and sometimes to Greek—the only grammar taught then) to decide for oneself what must be right. How this usage tradition developed in grammars and books of opinion through the 18th century and down to our own day is sketched in the introductory essay to this book. The purist is thus the recipient of a body of opinion concerned primarily with matters of propriety, taste, and personal preference, often elevated to the status of grammatical rules. Such opinion does not, in general, draw upon literature except to correct it. Shaw 1970 opines that "a purist seems to feel that man was made for language and refuses to acknowledge that language was not only made for man but that it is determined and shaped by his use—and nothing else." Copperud 1970 points out that discussions can be found under the heading Purist in Bernstein 1965, Copperud 1964, and Evans 1957, and under Purism and Pedantry in Fowler 1965. He notes that the opinions expressed of purism are generally derogatory. |
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英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。