The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing (Hardcover)

Introduction; 1. Scripting identity?: English language and literacy instruction in the Highlands and the strange case of Alexander MacDonald; 2. 'A grammarians regard to the genius of our tongue': Johnson's Dictionary, imperial grammar and the customary national language; 3. Women, Celts and hollow voices: Tobias Smollett's brokering of Anglo-British linguistic identities; 4. The figure of the nation: polite language and its originary other in Adam Smith's and Hugh Blair's Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres; 5. 'A translator without originals': William Shaw's Scots Gaelic and the dialectic of (linguistic) empire; Epilogue: Jane Austen's language and the strangeness at home in the center.