it was possible to smear classical philology as a form of ponderous Teutonic nonsense
due to Germanic influence; this helped pave the way for the rise of English
English was a upstart, amateurish affair as academic subjects went, hardly able to compete on equal terms with the rigours of Greats or philology; since every English gentleman read his own literature in his spare time anyway, what was the point of submitting it to systematic study
his rhetorical claim to be 'representative' of humankind, to speak with the voice of the people and utter eternal verities
The largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements is part of what is meant by 'ideology'. By 'ideology' I mean, roughly, the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power-structure and power-relations of the society we live in.
I like this definition a lot
A pub conversation may well transmit information, but what also bulks large in such dialogue is a strong element of what linguists would call the 'phatic', a concern with the act of communication itself
