Webster’s 1793 speller: not yet a portrait of America
From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of History of Education (RSE)
Virginia Meirelles, Universidade de Brasilia
Linda Mitchell, San José State University
Maria Revuelta, San José State University
It has been claimed Webster’s speller has contributed to the standardization of the English language in the North American variety and that it promoted the devel-opment of the American character and society in oppo-sition to the British (Svobodny & Born 1985). Webster’s speller was the most popular instructional material of its time, selling 70 million copies between 1783 and 1900 (Webster & Warfel 1953, XXXV).
Through his speller, Webster maintained that the adoption of a common language after independence could help develop a feeling of national unity in the United States (henceforth, the “us” in the US) because the «political harmony» of the country depended upon the elimination of differences in pronunciation that could stimulate social «ridicule and disrespect» (Webster 1790, 20). He stressed that an «approximation of dialects [could] be certain», but the «establishment of schools» and «uniformity in the use of books» could also «annihilate differences in speak-ing and preserve the purity of the American tongue» (Webster 1790, 19). Hence, he promoted the use of a uniform variety, intending to provide an identity to the new nation and prevent civil disorder. With that in mind, in 1783, he published The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language to present not only «a new plan of reducing the pronunciation of our language to an easy standard» but to «abolish ignorance» (Webster 1783).
Prior to the American Revolution, many British spellers were being reproduced in the US. Yet, the first speller to be based on American English was A New Guide to the English Tongue, written by the Rever-end Thomas Dilworth of England. The speller was first published in England in 1740 and later reprinted in the United States in 1747 where it became the most accept-ed speller (Lyman 1922, 33; Monaghan 1983). However, after the Declaration of Independence, spellers authored by British writers were no longer appreciated, and therefore, several spellers by American authors appeared. One of these included Webster. This essay acknowledges Webster’s changes and edits in his 1793 speller as an important part in his developing of ideas regarding how to describe the English lan-guage as spoken in the US. Additionally, it compares Webster’s speller to Dilworth’s to determine how the processes of teaching and learning to read in an institution permanently linked to the oral domain may con-tribute, from Webster’s perspective, to the formation of the national character. In other words, this study presents an evaluation of Webster’s ideology and showcases how it affected the elements he modified as well as the ones he incorporated into his speller. As such, the article discusses how, for Webster, the question of adopting a national language is a question of state, with a policy of invasion and annulment of differences.
Indeed, Wakefield identifies the success of Webster’s speller with the fact that it presented con-tent that did not portray any particular region in the US (Wakefield 1998, 18–19). Moreover, his language teaching model follows a political project according to which the selection of the national language is rather idiosyncratic and its configuration takes place through literacy and usage. The paper demonstrates that the changes that Webster introduced in the speller are in line with the sociopolitical needs of the time. The first section describes how the political and social context in different periods of the history of the US influenced children’s instruction. The second section presents a comparison of the two spellers. Then, the article discusses the relation between nation and language. The following section explains how linguistic description and prescription relate to the need to foster a common language in Web-ster’s work, while the fifth section presents his vision of education. And lastly, the paper evaluates whether the speller really presents a description of the new country.
SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT AND EDUCATION
The North American education system was described by Francis Bellamy in 1892 as «the most char-acteristic product of the four centuries of American life» upon which «the foundation of the greatness of this Republic» is based (United States 1892, 65).Actu-ally, since the first settlers belonged to a homogeneous group of people fleeing religious persecution in England, they created compact communities (Scofield 1938, 652–663) that promoted the development of strong bonds. In those communities, encouraging the teaching of reading was associated with the Protestant Reformation and with public speech. Consequently, some of the motivations for demanding the vernacular were to prepare individuals to read the Bible (Lyman 1922, 11, 17, 63), to encourage citizens to be part of the government system, and to pre-pare them for leadership (Lyman 1922, 64; Culbertson 2012, 8). Notwithstanding, the political and social transformations after 1750 had an impact on education. First, the relevance of religion diminished, and an involvement with trade, shipping, and commerce arose (Cubberley 1919, 37–40).
Those changes affected the North American view of education. Secondly, after the Revolutionary War, the interest in the education of the young declined for several reasons: lack of economic demand for education, independence of towns, and lack of cit-ies (Cubberley 1919, 655; Cubberley 1920, 77). Third, the government started to provide economic support to schools after Independence and especially after the Con-tinental Congress Ordinance of 1785, but education con-tinued to be controlled by the church or remained a pri-vate matter (Cubberley 1919, 45–52). It was only in 1791 that education changed from church control to state control (Cubberley 1920, 653). Since any kind of text represents the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and values of the writer (Fairclough, 2003), the educational material created or chosen to teach in colonial times, represents the ethical, moral, and religious values of the time. The textbooks, written by “Protestant and New Englanders” who believed that education was necessary to correct the mind and estab-lish a good government, reflected those beliefs (Svobodny & Born 1985, 4). In colonial times, the books used in school were the Hornbook, the Primer, the psalter (or book of psalms), the New Testament, and the Bible. The primer was a book that presented material taken from the Bible. A speller presented tables and “lessons” that may have con-sisted of sentences or texts. Spellers had been in use in England since the late 15th century, yet they were only adopted in the colonies in the late 18th century (Mona-ghan & Barry 1999, 14–16). After the Revolutionary War, textbooks began to show standardized language, to describe social customs in America (Svobodny & Born 1985, 1), and question the accuracy of the English language as used in the US. They also showed a more secular content (Cubberley 1919, 41) because of the diminishing importance of religion in public matters during the 18th century (Wakefield 1998, 10).
Consequently, the Puritan catechism gave place to fables. The teaching methods also changed. In colonial times, teaching English consisted of the recitation of sequences, learning rules by rote, and using question-and-answer techniques (Lyman 1922, 103, 135).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rse-13497
Read Full Text: https://rivistadistoriadelleducazione.it/index.php/rse/article/view/13497
