It is sometimes hard to write dispassionately about the English language. Earlier chapters have documented the different forms taken by English, and how these have changed over the centuries. We have also looked at how English has been used, alongside other languages, in different parts of the English-speaking world. A constant theme has been the sets of beliefs and values with which these forms and uses of English have been associated. Researchers have set out to investigate such beliefs and values: Chapter 7, for instance, discussed different methods used to elicit people’s views about the qualities of English accents, such as their correctness or attractiveness. But language scholars themselves have been anything but dispassionate in their observations. Chapters 3-5 mentioned the part played, historically, by language scholars in constructing certain ‘stories’ of English. And Chapter 1 discussed contemporary linguists’judgements about the validity of native and non-native or standard and nonstandard varieties of the language.

This study investigates the reclassification of English locative verbs with the following question: What factors caused the change? Firstly, the patten of the class change is observed in terms of both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and then possible factors that cause the change are investigated sequentially by examining whether the factors may be operable. In addition, this study observed what factor can work at the base and what factor can be applied extensively. Reclassified verbs have changed their class from Ground-only to alternating verb class, and there is a preference to use most alternating locative verbs in Figure precedent constructions. This study reveals that there are two processes or two levels of processing that affect the syntactic change involved in the use of locative verbs, but they are independent. In one case, semantic change directly affects the structure of locative verbs. In the second case, the cognitive process directly causes the class change. However, this change is not affected by semantic change. Figure Precedence Principle can be an important factor in explaining the change in the use of locative verbs by reflecting on the cognitive process of human brain.

I recycle paper, plastic, glass, cardboard and metal, I sign petitions, I turn off the lights, I fret over my airplane miles, I dream of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and blizzards, I take the bus, I write a poem, I turn down the temperature, I read up on heat waves and urban demographics, I buy local, I retweet George Monbiot and Keith Barnham, I reuse envelopes, I donate money and clothes, I take a train, I watch the news, I put the coffee grains and potato peelings in the compost, I apologize… .

Whilst much of the recent focus on modern criticism and the teaching of English Literature in Britain have focused on the work of F. R. Leavis and <it>Scrutiny</it>, this article examines wider conceptions of the English School between the 1930s and 1960s in the figures of L. C. Knights, Bonamy Dobr<a><ac>e</ac><ac>´</ac></a>e, F. W. Bateson, and David Daiches. From the radical political climate of the 1930s and 1940s, there emerged a ‘Social Democratic’ vision of English teaching within a number of British universities, which attempted to connect teaching and research to the idea that literature provided a remedy to political extremism and the ills of mass society. This vision stressed that the subject was necessary training to create democratic and humane citizens capable of administering and living in a modern welfare state society. The piecemeal reforms to particular departments and wider visions of Knights, Dobr<a><ac>e</ac><ac>´</ac></a>e, Bateson, and Daiches influenced a generation of their pupils and subsequent academics and was instrumental in the creation of new English Departments during the 1960s.

After surveying the English of the British Isles in Chapter 7, in this chapter we take a further, closer look at today’s American English and its background, especially as it compares and contrasts with British English. (We will use the abbreviation AmE and BrE for these two ‘reference varieties’ in this chapter.) We make no apology for devoting further space to these two regional varieties, particularly AmE. First, between them, they represent a large proportion of all native speakers of English (over 80 per cent). Second, they have historically been the origin of the whole gamut of world-wide English. Figure 8.1 shows the global provenance of English, branching out from the two rootstocks of BrE and AmE.