ROUND ROBIN

Round Robin (n) A petition in which the signees write their names in a circular pattern. Often used by sailors so that none of the signees could be identified as the ringleader, as a precaution against the severe punishments for disobedience and mutiny.

I believe that in writing, form doesn’t follow function, but form is function. I am a historical sociolinguist, specialised in questions of language standardisation usage and prescriptivism, language attitudes and the standard language, as well as Late Modern letter writing, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. I  teach writing and presenting in academic English. I am also an editor and reviewer of works on language, particularly English usage and the history of English.

Robin Straaijer

Academic English

Academic publishing uses a specialised genre that requires a specific form of language use known as Academic English. I will help you master this special dialect of English. The courses are for those who need to improve their writing (and presenting) skills in Academic English, such as young academics (both native and non-native speakers of English) who are new to this very specific genre, or more established academics who have not published in English before. I teach Academic English writing in collaboration with Taalcentrum – VU in Amsterdam, and with Babel Talen in Utrecht, and I am available for personal tutoring in this genre as well.

Leiden University

Language Acquisition 1: pronunciation & vocabulary (BA)

Fall 2017. Department of English Language and Culture, University of Leiden

The Language of Jane Austen (MA)

Fall 2011. Department of English Language and Culture, University of Leiden (Jane Austen, English historical linguistics, and History of English Language)

Shakespeare and Early Modern English (BA)

Fall 2011. Department of English Language and Culture, University of Leiden (Shakespeare, English historical linguistics, Early Modern English drama, History of English Language)

Introduction to Late Modern English (BA)

Spring 2008. Department of English Language and Culture, University of Leiden (English historical linguistics, History of English Language, Late Modern English)

forthcoming

Standardization. In Mark Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Modern English Usage from Britain to America. English Today 34: 4.

2018

The Usage Guide: Evolution of a Genre. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.) English Usage Guides: History, Advice, Attitudes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2017

Prescriptivism. In Mark Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

2016

A Perspective on Prescriptivism: Language in reviews of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. In Carol Percy and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing standards across time and space. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Codification and Correctness: the normative sources of Joseph Priestley’s The Rudiments of English Grammar. In Massimo Sturiale & Giovanni Iamartino (eds.) Language and History 59: 1, pp. 14–24. (19 July)

Time for a new (but not ‘New’) Fowler. Review of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage by Jeremy Butterfield, 2015. English Today. (15 February)

Attitudes to Prescriptivism (Ed.) special issue Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37: 3.

2015

Attitudes to Prescriptivism: An Introduction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37: 3, pp. 233–242 (published online 5 August 2015)

The Hyper Usage Guide of English Database User Manual. Website Bridging the Unbridgeable: linguists, prescriptivists and the general public (February)

2014

Rules of engagement? Usage and normativism: public discourse and critical language awareness. English Today 118. Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 11–12. (8 May)

‘The Sense of Style,’ a milestone on winding road to better writing (appeared online under the title Can something be totally unique? Steven Pinker’s new book says yes). The Washington Post. (6 November)

When Did We Start Caring About “Hopefully”? 250 Years of English Usage Advice. Lexicon Valley blog at Slate.com. (7 August)

Review of Internet Linguistics by David Crystal. English Studies. Vol. 95, No. 5, pp. 590–592. (8 July)

A Time For Critical Language Awareness. Cambridge Extra blog. (27 June)

Bruggen Slaan in Cambridge. NWO Humanities blog. (22 May)

2013

Joseph Priestley, Grammarian. The Joseph Priestley House Newsletter. (Spring issue)

2012

Long-s in Late Modern English manuscripts. English Language and Linguistics. Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 319–338. (with Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw)

2011

Joseph Priestley, Grammarian: Late Modern English normativism and usage in a sociohistorical context. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series.

2010

Deontic and Epistemic Modals as Indicators of Prescriptive and Prescriptive Language in the Grammars by Joseph Priestley and Robert Lowth. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff (eds.) Current Issues in Late Modern English, pp. 57–88. Bern: Peter Lang.

Review of Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network: Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth-Century Epistolary English by Anni Sairio. English Studies. Vol. 91, No. 7, pp. 812–813. (27 October)

Prescription or practice? Be/have Variation with Past Participles of Mutative Intransitive Verbs in the Letters of Joseph Priestley. In Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber & Robert Mailhammer (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 2008: Volume I: The History of English Verbal and Nominal Constructions, pp. 63–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2009

Review of Corpus-Based Language Studies: an Advanced Resource Book by Tony McEnery, Richard Xiao & Yukio Tono. Language and Literature. Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 394–395. (27 October)

2016

Following Fowler: a bird’s-eye view of the English usage guide. Symposium “Life After HUGE?”University of Leiden (9 December 2016)

2015

Compiling the HUGE database. Workshop “How useful are usage guides?” for TeamWork. Utrecht, Netherlands (6 February 2015).

2014

Presenting the HUGE database + observations on usage guides and usage problems. University of Cambridge, UK (27 June 2014)

2013

A Perspective on Prescriptivism: the reception of an English usage guide. University of Leiden, Netherlands (14 June 2013)

The English Hyper Usage Guide. Utrecht University, Netherlands (7 February 2013)

2012

The Normative Force of Custom: normative language in Joseph Priestley’s descriptive English grammar. Bogazici University, Turkey (6 September 2012)

My commissioned work falls mainly into the genres of theatre and travel photography. See the pages in the top menu for examples. You can also visit my flickr page for more photos and my personal work.

Theatre

I document the shows of several Amsterdam-based improv theatre groups, easylaughs, Tag Out Theatre, and The Ferocious Four, where I capture the fun, action and drama of improvised comedy theatre. My photos are regularly published in Status, a Spanish/English language magazine about improvisational theatre. I am also one of the staff photographers for the International Improvisational Theatre Festival Impro Amsterdam.

Travel

I regularly shoot for city-trip articles in the largest independent travel magazine in The Netherlands, Columbus Travel, showing the latest and most interesting in off-the-beaten tracks in some of Europe’s lesser visited cities.

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Terms and conditions for photographic work are those drawn up by the organisation DuPho (Dutch Photographers) and can be found here (in Dutch).