ABSTRACT
The chapter shows how the growth in the vocabulary of English helped to improve its status and make users feel confident that their language was not quite so impoverished as some before the sixteenth century thought. It discusses also how scholars began to realise that to increase the language’s status even more, books describing the language - grammars, dictionaries and the like - were required. The landmark figure of the chapter is the sixteenth-century teacher and scholar Richard Mulcaster. He wrote about the English language and encouraged others to do so. He was also an enthusiast - just what was needed to turn the tide away from criticism towards admiration for the language.
