Books by Anne (University of Michigan Curzan

Anne Curzan demonstrates the important role prescriptivism plays in the history of the English language. Starting with a pioneering new definition of prescriptivism as a linguistic phenomenon, she highlights the significant role played by Microsoft's grammar checker, debates about 'real words', non-sexist language reform, and efforts to reappropriate stigmatized terms.

How did grammatical gender in English get replaced by a system dependent on natural gender? How is this related to 'irregular agreement' (she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (generic he) in Modern English? This study, based on extensive corpus data, offers an important historical perspective on these controversial questions.