The Hidden Politics of Grammar - Unveiling Discourses of American Identity in a Corpus of Historical American Grammar Writing

The Hidden Politics of Grammar is a thorough investigation into a corpus of historical American grammar texts, revealing how their linguistic choices decisively contributed to the creation and maintenance of an explicitly American identity.
Drawing on a newly compiled corpus of 18th and 19th-century American grammars of English (HistAGram), this study challenges the perception of these texts as neutral instructional materials. Instead, spelling conventions, lexical choices, and recurring themes of patriotism and shared heritage demonstrate the texts' political nature because they reflect and replicate their authors' national beliefs and ideologies. Du Bois employs a mixed methods approach, combining methodologies from historical corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and network analysis. The research also introduces a comparative dimension through a parallel analysis of the HeidelGram corpus and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), exploring how both British and American grammars similarly construct their respective national sentiments.
This monograph is essential reading for researchers in corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and American studies. It will also be of interest to scholars in education history, publishing history, and political discourse studies.

List of contents

1. Introduction 2 . Historical Grammars of English-A Mirror of Ideologies? 3. The Notion of American National Identity 4. Constructing the Corpus of Historical American Grammars (HistAGram) 5. A Mixed Methods Approach to Grammar Discourse 6. An Analysis of Onomastic References 7. Branding America as a Nation 8. A Call to Shared Heritage and Beliefs 9. Delineating Historical American Grammar Writing 10. Conclusion

About the author

Sophie A. L. Du Bois is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cologne, Germany.

Product details

• Authors: Sophie A. L. Du Bois
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 13.05.2026
• EAN: 9781041209188
• ISBN: 978-1-041-20918-8
• No. of pages: 286
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Zeichnungen, schwarz-weiss
• Series: Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Nationalism, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, Sociolinguistics, Social & political philosophy, social and political philosophy, Historical & comparative linguistics, Historical and comparative linguistics, Nationalism and nationalist ideologies and movements