Arguments about the sociopolitical significance of the informalisation of English have been central to the critical study of language in society since the 1980s. This article demonstrates that informalisation was also a key concern of ordinary users of British English in the 1980s. Correspondents in the British Mass Observation Project articulated judgements of informalisation that were in many ways continuous with those of academic linguists. The article argues that such critical arguments about language were part of a ‘structure of feeling’ (Raymond Williams) of late twentieth-century Britain. This suggests a rethinking of ordinary language users’ relations to their linguistic experience, not as unthinkingly ‘prescriptivist’, nor as merely ‘commonsensical’, but as exhibiting a nuance which academic linguists would do well to engage with more fully. The article makes the case for the use of social-historical archives in investigations of metalanguage, as a means by which the social significance of language can be better understood. (Critical linguistics, folk linguistics, terms of address, informalisation, synthetic personalisation, prescriptivism)

中文翻译：

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人民的批判语言学：使用档案数据调查对语言非正式化的反应

自 1980 年代以来，关于英语非正式化的社会政治意义的争论一直是社会语言批判性研究的核心。本文表明，非正式化也是 1980 年代英式英语普通用户的主要关注点。英国大众观察项目的记者清楚地表达了对非正式化的判断，这些判断在许多方面与学术语言学家的判断是连续的。文章认为，这种关于语言的批判性论证是 20 世纪后期英国“感觉结构”（雷蒙德·威廉姆斯）的一部分。这表明重新思考普通语言使用者与他们的语言经验的关系，而不是不假思索的“规定主义”，也不是仅仅“常识”，但它表现出一种细微差别，学术语言学家最好更充分地参与其中。本文提出了在元语言调查中使用社会历史档案的案例，以此作为更好地理解语言的社会意义的一种手段。（批判语言学、民间语言学、称呼语、非正式化、综合个性化、规定主义）