Watts's book seeks to identify and deconstruct myths related to the history and development of the English language. In effect, he broadens the concept of folk etymology to a scale that might be called folk sociolinguistics. The book carefully details how these English language myths formed and what the underlying impetuses were for their evolution. The book further discusses how the history of the English language should not be viewed as the diachronic merging of many forms and dialects into the single standard form that is spoken today. Watts states that such a view ignores not only valuable insights into the history of the dialects of English, but also the emergence of new forms that continue to appear in the modern era.
Ch. 1 eloquently sets up Watts's framework through a definition of the term “myth,” for which he draws upon Bourdieu's discussion of doxa, that is, a society's commonly held belief system. It continues with a study of the term “metaphor,” which Watts believes is the foundation of myth. He uses Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Cognitive Blending Theory to approach metaphor as a tool for understanding abstract concepts. He carefully diagrams these ideas, which is of great value for those not familiar with either theory. Finally, the book utilizes Michel Foucault's concept of “archive,” which Watts calls “discourse archive,” to define cultural norms and restrictions related to speech acts and writing. The book uses the history of the English discourse archive to explain how English language myths and metaphors developed into language ideologies that were promulgated within English-speaking society.
The following chapters deconstruct myths that Watts argues are connected to the English language. Ch. 2 introduces a detailed discussion on the history of the Beowulf manuscript as a means of tackling the belief that the epic provides English with a language heritage extending back to the fifth century AD. Chs. 3 and 4 take English up to the twelfth century and examine the myths that the Anglo-Saxon language continued unaffected throughout the Norman Conquest and occupation, and that it eventually formed an English creole with Norman French. Chs. 5 and 6 examine dialectal regions and dialectal changes including Northern and Southern England and the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries. Ch. 7 tackles Jonathan Swift's (1712) A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English tongue, which has been taken as a complaint about the degeneration of the English language. Watts argues against this perspective and suggests that it be viewed as a satirical text.
Chs. 8, 9, and 10 examine language ideologies before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution (IR) and trace these ideologies through the historical trajectory of maintaining language purity and separating economic social classes (pre-IR), fostering national unity (during the IR), and finally, establishing proper, educated English (post-IR). Ch. 11 examines the belief that English is a “world language” and Ch. 12 provides a conclusion with an emphasis on how language myths are a part of language that will never go away.
