Definition:
The language of a particular group, profession, region, or country, especially as spoken rather than formally written. See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "native"Observations:
- "Around the middle of the fourteenth century English began to be accepted as an appropriate language for government, law, and literature. In response to this wider use of the vernacular, a debate over its suitability as a means of communicating scripture and theology began in the 1300s."
(Judy Ann Ford, John Mirk's Festial, DS Brewer, 2006) - "The Elizabethans had discovered once and for all the artistic power of the vernacular and had freed native writers from a crippling sense of inferiority, for which the classical languages and the classicists were largely responsible."
(Richard Foster Jones, The Triumph of the English Language, Stanford UP, 1953) - "American writers were . . . the first to intuit that the catchall web of the vernacular reflected the mind at its conscious level. The new melodious tongue shaped the writer to a greater extent than he shaped the language."
(Wright Morris, About Fiction, Harper, 1975) - "[N]arratives of vernacular rhetoric can afford a certain accuracy in gauging public opinion that otherwise is unavailable. Were leaders to hear these opinions and take them seriously, the quality of public discourse might take a positive turn. Understanding people's concerns and why they hold them holds promise for helping leaders to communicate with society's active members rather than manipulating them."
(Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1999)
Pronunciation: ver-NAK-ye-ler
