Jurg R. Schwyter, "Dictating to the Mob: The History of the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English"
English | ISBN: 0198736738 | 2016 | 256 pages | PDF | 30 MB
The BBC's Advisory Committee on Spoken English was set up to provide an authoritative guide to pronunciation and the use of language for BBC announcers. The results of its deliberations were published for general consumption in a pamphlet called Spoken English. Based on primary sources, the compelling story of the Advisory Board during its crucial first 13 years is told here for the first time. It reveals how board members, including George Bernard Shaw and Julian Huxley, soon discovered that standardization and regulation of spoken language is extremely challenging and highly controversial.