...English language from degradation, a project he likened to preserving the political ideals of the nation: "Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration: we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language".13 At least, this is the goal...

...Johnson points to the parallel in this regard between the linguistic and political realms in the Preface: "Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language." Burke picks up the thread...

...those being published today. Johnson himself goes on to make a case for an attempt at prescription: It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that...have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language." (Johnson, 1773, p. xii) If...

...we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot ultimately be defeated: tongues like governments have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. In the hope of giving longevity...

...in his time, and which I think are apt today: 'If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible ... it remains that we retard what we cannot repel; that...have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution; let us make some struggle for our language. ' It is in that great spirit...

...pride" (294). Johnson links the "wind" of oral expression to anxieties about the nation, noting that "life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot...have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language" (296). Although the comparison...

...that one contains and the other lacks a dedication to the nobleman. and is, in all modesty, content that 'we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure' (1747: C2v, 191). Apart from personal remarks, such as the famous deprecatory descriptions of the drudgery...

...in Johnson's preface, Pinker would have come across words that he could not have misunderstood: ... tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggle for our language. Postscript and Afterthoughts...

...Dictionary Johnson makes a claim whose importance for the constitution of literature cannot be overstated: "tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language" (C2v). On one level Johnson...