Cant [ Language & Speech ]
… as hypocritical perversions of language. In the long eighteenth century, the two meanings co-existed, as exemplified by Johnson's entries concerning the term in his Dictionary of the English Language 1 , and the word was used in several … some late Authors to introduce and multiply Cant Words, which is the most ruinous Corruption in any Language.’ 4 As for Johnson , his dictionary was explicitly presented as an attempt to save the English language which had ‘been hitherto … resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion; and exposed to the corruption of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.’ (Johnson, ‘Preface’) Fashion was therefore deemed susceptible to threaten the English language as new linguistic usages …
Controversy | Conversation | Hypocrisy | Rhetoric
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