ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the keyconcepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book sets out one part of the thesis-antithesis structure. It places Austen's prose in the context of an important movement in eighteenth-century thinking about language which was one application of the development of print culture. The book demonstrates the importance of prescriptivism in a discussion of Austen's lexis. It introduces the other strain in eighteenth-century culture and linguistic thinking which forms Austen's prose, the antithesis to prescriptivism's thesis. The book focuses on the ways that Johnsonian syntax permeated Austen's prose, and the range of responses she had to this most formal and masculine of styles. It looks at a range of developments in Austen's writing, focusing on her representation of speech and of thought. The book suggests that there was a marked change in Austen's style between the Steventon and the Chawton novels, and that this change was not incremental but disjunctive.
