ABSTRACT
The phrase 'the Queen's English' derives in the first instance from 'the King's English' which in turn is formed by analogy with phrases such as 'the King's coin' or 'the King's standard'. 'The King's English' is recorded first in Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) and was used with prescriptive intent. Referring to particular usage to which he objected, Wilson argued that it was 'counterfeiting the King's English'. Of course as Alford points out, this phrase does not mean that the language belongs to the monarch; he takes it instead to refer metaphorically to the language which is the 'common right' of all and the 'general property of our country'. However, despite his protestation about general access to the language, based upon comparison with the Queen's highway, it is clear that there is more to Alford's definition than he makes evident. For there is also the question of authority to be addressed. In combinations such as 'the King's counsel', 'the King's highway' or 'the King's peace', the definition given is: 'with the sense of belonging to, in the service of the King, as head of the state, royal'. That is to say, in such phrases there is an object (counsel, highway, peace, the English language) which is governed by a certain form of authority, that of the King as head of state. The phrase does not simply have the sense of commonality which Alford ascribes to it, but carries the sense of language which is validated and authorised by some sort of external power. It is clear in this case that it is not legal power (as it is in the cases of the King's counsel, highway or peace) but power of a different order. That power which governs the language is, it is specified, not that of 'rule and analogy' but that which counts as 'the usage of our language'. However, as Walker had pointed out in the eighteenth century, the problem with usage is that it does not declare itself and thus has to be ascertained and proclaimed, which is essentially to say that 'the Queen's English' is properly that form of the language which is counted as such, and ratified, by prescriptivists and their institutional practices. To put it another way, 'the Queen's English' is 'the prescriptivists' English'; moreover, this is a form of prescriptivism which gains its force from the false analogy with legal and political processes.
