Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics 9783110488401, 9783110488395

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contributors
1 Introduction
2 Stylistic devices of Christians expressingcontradiction against the Gentiles
3 A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approachto late Middle English correspondence: Evidencefrom the Stonor Letters
4 Advice to prospectors (and others). Knowledgedissemination, power and persuasion in Late ModernEnglish emigrants’ guides and correspondence
5 Language policy in the long nineteenth century:Catalonia and Schleswig
6 Authorship and gender in English historicalsociolinguistic research: Samples from the PastonLetters
7 Dialect death? The present state of the dialects ofthe Scottish fishing communities
8 Orthographic regularization in Early ModernEnglish printed books: Grapheme distribution andvowel length indication
9 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits ofstandardization: Evidence from Dutch
10 ‘Like a pack-hors trying to copy after an antilope’:A case of eighteenth-century non-native English
11 A mensa et thoro. On the tense relationshipbetween literacy and the spoken word in earlymodern times

Citation preview

Cinzia Russi (Ed.) Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics

Cinzia Russi (Ed.)

Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Series Editor: Cinzia Russi Language Editor: Manuela Rocchi

Open Access Historical Linguistics

ISBN: 978-3-11-048839-5 e-ISBN: 978-3-11-048840-1 ISBN EPUB 978-3-11-048844-9

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. © 2016 Cinzia Russi and Chapters’ Contributors Published by De Gruyter Open Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com. Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Series Editor: Cinzia Russi Language Editor: Manuela Rochci www.degruyteropen.com Cover illustration: © johnnorth / www.thinkstockphotos.com Complimentary copy, not for sale.

Contents Acknowledgments

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List of Contributors XII Contributors

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Cinzia Russi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Historical sociolinguistics: Origins and developments 4 1.2 Historical sociolinguistics: The field 8 1.3 The present volume 14 References

1

Georgios Alexandropoulos 2

Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against 19 the Gentiles 19 2.1 Introduction 26 2.2 Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians (Πρεσβεῖα περί Χριστιανῶν) 26 2.2.1 Context of the speech 26 2.2.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction 30 2.3 Tatian: Address to the Greeks (Πρὸς Ἕλληνας) 30 2.3.1 Context of the speech 30 2.3.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction 34 2.4 St. Justin Martyr: First and Second Apology 34 2.4.1 Context of the speeches 34 2.4.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction 2.5 St. Gregory Nazianzen: First and Second Invective against Julian the Emperor 36 36 2.5.1 Context of the speeches 37 2.5.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction 40 2.6 Conclusion 42 References J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre 3 3.1

A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English 46 correspondence: Evidence from the Stonor Letters ‘Communities of practice’ and the third-wave approach in historical sociolinguistics 47

3.2 Identity in the late English Middle Ages and in the Stonor Letters 49 3.3 Oxfordshire cofeoffees and civil servants: a fifteenth-century community of practice in the Stonor letters 52 58 3.4 Linguistic analysis 58 3.4.1 Letter writing and code choice 59 3.4.2 Keyness and n-gram analysis 63 3.5 Conclusion 64 References Marina Dossena 4

Advice to prospectors (and others). Knowledge dissemination, power and persuasion in Late Modern English emigrants’ guides and 67 correspondence 67 4.1 Introduction 68 4.1.1 Beyond explorers 70 4.2 Guidance and advice in published sources 70 4.2.1 Keywords in titles 73 4.2.2 Maps and more 75 4.3 Guidance and advice in familiar correspondence 77 4.4 Description and evaluation 78 4.5 Concluding remarks 79 References James Hawkey and Nils Langer 5

Language policy in the long nineteenth century: 81 Catalonia and Schleswig 81 5.1 Language policy and the long nineteenth century 85 5.2 Catalonia 85 5.2.1 Precursors to the long nineteenth century 88 5.2.2 The Catalan language and the beginnings of nationalism 90 5.2.3 Catalan language ideologies and the development of nationalism 5.2.4 Catalan language status planning measures at the turn of the twentieth century 91 5.2.5 Catalan language corpus planning measures at the turn of the twentieth century 92 94 5.3 Schleswig 5.3.1 Low German: The disappearance of a language and renaissance as a dialect 95 97 5.3.2 The Danish-German national conflict

5.3.3 The promotion of Frisian as a distinct language 102 5.4 Discussion 105 References

99

Juan M. Hernández-Campoy 6

Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research: 108 Samples from the Paston Letters 108 6.1 Introduction: historical sociolinguistics 112 6.2 Literacy, authorship and gender in England 114 6.3 Objectives 116 6.4 Evidence from the Paston family 121 6.4.1 Grammatical variables: Personal and relative pronouns 126 6.4.2 Orthographic variable: (th) 136 6.5 Conclusion 137 References Robert McColl Millar 7

Dialect death? The present state of the dialects of the Scottish fishing 143 communities 143 7.1 Introduction: The eclipse of the traditional dialect 145 7.2 Koineisation 148 7.3 Regional koineisation in the modern age 150 7.4 Fisher speak: The terminal phase of the traditional dialect 154 7.4.1 Findings of the project 154 7.4.1.1 Survival of lexical items 155 7.4.1.2 Loss of lexical items 156 7.4.1.3 ‘Thinning’ of lexis and meaning 157 7.4.1.4 Broadening of meaning 159 7.4.1.5 Knowledge and use 159 7.4.2 Summary 160 7.5 Dialect death? 162 References Hanna Rutkowska 8 8.1 8.2 8.2.1

Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books: 165 Grapheme distribution and vowel length indication 165 Aims, corpus and methodology 168 Distribution of graphemes and 168

and 169 170 and 171 Theoreticians’ opinions on the distribution of graphemes 172 Indication of vowel length 173 Early Modern English /iː/ reflecting Middle English /eː/ 175 Early Modern English /ɛː/ and /eː/ reflecting Middle English /ɛː/ 177 Early Modern English /uː/ reflecting Middle English /oː/ 180 Early Modern English /ɔː/ and /oː/ reflecting Middle English /ɔː/ Indication of vowel length in The Schoole editions: Summary of changes 181 182 8.3.6 Theoreticians’ opinions on the vowel length indication 186 8.4 Conclusions 188 List of abbreviations 188 References 8.2.2 8.2.3 8.2.4 8.3 8.3.1 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.3.4 8.3.5

Gijsbert Rutten 9

Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence 194 from Dutch 194 9.1 Introduction 195 9.2 Sociolinguistic space past and present 198 9.3 Sociolinguistic space from below 200 9.4 Case study: Negation in Dutch 201 9.4.1 The change 203 9.4.2 Conditions on the change from bipartite to single negation 205 9.4.3 Individual variation 210 9.5 The limits of standardization 212 9.6 Standardization as a datable phenomenon 214 9.7 Conclusions 215 References Anni Sairio 10

‘Like a pack-hors trying to copy after an antilope’: A case of eighteenth219 century non-native English 219 10.1 Introduction 221 10.2 The life, letters and autobiography of Joseph Emin (1726–1809) 10.3 Identity construction: Reference terms, Asiatic tinctures and cultural identity 224 230 10.4 Spelling variation 232 10.5 Emin as an L2 writer: Returning to the question of identity

10.6 Conclusion 234 235 References Anja Voeste A mensa et thoro. On the tense relationship between literacy and the 237 spoken word in early modern times 237 11.1 Introduction 240 11.2 Syntax 240 11.2.1 Subject gaps in asymmetric coordination 244 11.2.2 Afinite constructions 246 11.3 Morphology 252 11.4 Graphematics 257 11.5 Conclusions 257 References 11

List of Figures List of Tables Index

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262 263

Acknowledgments There are many people I am indebted to for assisting me in the realization of this volume. First of all, I would like to extend heartfelt thanks to Katarzyna Grzegorek for her trust and precious assistance throughout the project, and to the authors for giving me the opportunity of expanding my knowledge in the field of historical sociolinguistics: without them this volume would have never been possible. I am deeply grateful to Bryan Donaldson for reviewing the book proposal and providing insightful comments, and to Roger Lass for his invaluable help and kind support during several important stages of the work. Many warm thanks also go to the editorial staff at De Gruyter Open for carefully reviewing and preparing the final version of the manuscript. Finally, I am immensely grateful to my daughters Chiara (who kindly edited my English) and Alice, my husband Dario, and my son-in-law Case for continuing to show interest and enthusiasm for my work and for always being there there to make me happy with their love and understanding.

List of Contributors Chapter 1 Cinzia Russi The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter 6 Juan M. Hernández-Campoy Universidad de Murcia

Chapter 2 Georgios Alexandropoulos National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Chapter 7 Robert McColl Millar University of Aberdeen

Chapter 3 J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre Universidad de Murcia

Chapter 8 Hanna Rutkowska Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University

Chapter 4 Marina Dossena Università degli Studi di Bergamo (I)

Chapter 9 Gijsbert Rutten Universiteit Leiden

Chapter 5 James Hawkey University of Bristol

Chapter 10 Anni Sairio University of Helsinki

Nils Langer University of Bristol

Chapter 11 Anja Voeste Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen

Contributors Georgios Alexandropoulos received his PhD in Byzantine Greek Literature and Linguistics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2013. He is tutor of Ancient and Modern Greek language and his interests lie in historical sociolinguistics, dialectology rhetoric, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics. He is author of The text and context in Julian’s political speeches: coherence, intertextuality and communicative goal (in Greek; Lincom, 2013), The vocabulary of the idiom in Vasilaki of the Ancient Olympia (in Greek; Lincom, 2014a), Christians against the Ethnics (in Greek; Lincom, 2014b), The epitaphs of Gregory of Nazianzus: a stylistic approach (Lincom, 2014c), The stabilization of the set expressions of the Modern Greek language (in Greek; Lincom, 2015). Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre is Professor in the English Department at the University of Murcia (Spain), where he teaches historical linguistics and the history of English. He has published on a variety of topics in historical sociolinguistics, especially on the social and geograhical diffusion of late Middle English changes in progress, on medieval English dialects, and standardization. His publications include the Spanish textbook Sociolingüística histórica (2007) and the edited collections Variation and Linguistic Change in English (1999, with J.M Hernández-Campoy), Sociolinguistics and the History of English: Perspectives and Problems (2005, with J.M. HernándezCampoy), Medieval English Literary and Cultural Studies (2004, with Nila Vázquez), Editing Middle English in the 21st Century. Old Texts, New Approaches (2005, with Nila Vázquez), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (2012, with J.M. HernándezCampoy) and Approaches to Middle English. Variation, Contact and Change (2015, with J. Calle-Martín). He has also published articles in leading journals such as Atlantis, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Studia Anglica Posnaniensa, Language in Society, Neophilologus, Selim and Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, as well as chapters in volumes edited by Cambridge Scholars, Peter Lang, Rodopi, Brepols and Cambridge University Press, among others. He is currently general editor of Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. Marina Dossena is Full Professor of English Language at the University of Bergamo. Earlier in her career she taught at the University of Edinburgh (Italian Department, 1984-85) and at the University of Milan (Faculty of Political Science, 1998-2001). In 2003 (2nd semester) she was Visiting Professor at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). Her main research interests focus on English historical dialectology, especially in relation to Scots and Scottish English. She has also published contributions on historical pragmatics (argumentative discourse and nineteenth-century business English). Her current research centres on Late Modern English, and her most recent publication in this field is Marina Dossena (ed.), Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English (John Benjamins, 2015). Over the years, she has been invited to deliver keynote/

Contributors 

 XIII

plenary lectures at several international events both in Italy and abroad, and in 2014 she was invited to deliver a sub-plenary lecture at the 12th ESSE Conference in Košice (Slovakia). James Hawkey is Lecturer in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on language policy, language contact and language attitudes phenomena in Catalan-speaking regions of France and Spain.  Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy is Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Murcia, where he teaches on English Sociolinguistics, Varieties of English and the History of the English Language, as well as on research methods in sociolinguistics for postgraduate students. Similarly, his research interests include sociolinguistics, dialectology, and the history of English, where he has published extensively: books such as Sociolinguistic Styles (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), Style-Shifting in Public (John Benjamins, with J.A. Cutillas-Espinosa, 2012), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (Wiley-Blackwell, with J.C. Conde-Silvestre, 2012), Diccionario de Sociolingüística (Gredos, with P. Trudgill, 2007), Metodología de la Investigación Sociolingüística (Comares, 2005, with M. Almeida), Geolingüística (Editum, 1999), or Sociolingüística Británica (Octaedro, 1993); and articles in leading journals such as Language in Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Language Variation and Change, Language and Communication, Folia Linguistica, Multilingua, Neophilologie Mitteilungen, Sociolinguistic Studies, Spanish in Context, etc. Nils Langer is Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Bristol. His research broadly focuses on historical sociolinguistics, and his current work aims to sketch a sociolinguistic language history of the German-Danish borderlands. He is a founding member of the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN). Robert McColl Millar is Professor in Linguistics and Scottish Language at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. His most recent books include (with William Barras and Lisa Marie Bonnici) Lexical Variation and Attrition in the Scottish Fishing Communities (2014) and English Historical Sociolinguistics (2012). Hanna Rutkowska is Associate Professor at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. In the past (2001-2003), she lectured at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Her main research interests include historical (socio)linguistics, orthographic systems, language standardization, Early Modern English orthography, phonology and morphosyntax, and early books printed in English (15th–17th century). She is the author of two monographs, Graphemics and morphosyntax in the Cely Letters (1472–1478) (2003) and Orthographic systems in thirteen editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes

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 Contributors

(1506–1656) (2013) as well as the co-editor of the volume Scribes, printers, and the accidentals of their texts (2011), together with Jacob Thaisen. Hanna also published several articles in international journals such as Folia Linguistica Historica, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia and Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, as well as chapters in international handbooks on historical (socio) linguistics and in edited volumes. Gijsbert Rutten is senior researcher historical sociolinguistics of Dutch and assistant professor in Dutch historical linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. He directs the research project Going Dutch. The Construction of Dutch in Policy, Practice and Discourse, 1750-1850 (VIDI-grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, 2013-2018). Recent books include Touching the Past: Studies in the Historical Sociolinguistics of Ego-documents (co-edited with Marijke van der Wal; John Benjamins 2013), Letters as Loot: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch  (co-authored with Marijke van der Wal; John Benjamins 2014),  Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600-1900: A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective  (co-edited with Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche; John Benjamins 2014) and Past, Present and Future of a Language Border: RomanceGermanic Encounters in the Low Countries (co-edited with Catharina Peersman and Rik Vosters; De Gruyter 2015). Anni Sairio Anni Sairio is currently a Senior Lecturer in English philology at the Department of Modern Languages,  University of Helsinki. Her background is in historical sociolinguistics of English and corpus compilation, and her research interests include  the social meaning of language from identity constructions to orthographical variation, editing historical correspondence, and idiolect. Anja Voeste is a professor of historical linguistics/German language history at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. Her areas of specialization include graphematics and grammar in early modern times as well as language change in its historical settings.

Cinzia Russi

1 Introduction 1.1 Historical sociolinguistics: Origins and developments Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) is widely recognized as the first study to call attention to the relevance of incorporating external factors into diachronic analyses of language change although Hermann Paul had already drawn attention to the close the interrelationship between language history and socio-cultural factors almost a century earlier in Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (1880). Highlighting that “a model of language which accommodates the facts of variable usage and its social and stylistic determinants not only leads to more adequate descriptions of linguistics competence, but also naturally yields a theory of language change that bypasses the fruitless paradoxes with which historical linguistics has been struggling for over half a century” (99), and asserting that “[l]inguistic and social factors are closely interrelated in the development of language change. Explanations which are confined to one or the other aspect, no matter how well constructed, will fail to account for the rich body of regularities that can be observed in empirical studies of language behavior” (188), this seminal contribution unequivocally deals a blow to the enduring stand, originated with Saussure, that views synchrony and diachrony as irreconcilable dimensions of language (among others, cf. Aitchinson, 2012). In the relevant literature, the general consensus is that Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) laid the foundations of an approach to the study of language that is intrinsically historical and social and, consequently, contributed to the establishment and growth of historical sociolinguistics as a distinct area of research within historical linguistics. If Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) may suitably be viewed as marking the birth of historical sociolinguistics even though neither term appears in the article (Romaine, 2005: 1696), Romaine (1982) – which appears two years after the pioneering volume edited by Horst Sitta (1980) – plays a central role in laying the foundations of historical sociolinguistics in the Anglophone world (even though she uses the term sociohistorical linguistics). Her study demonstrates the viability of successfully applying variation theory to the domain of historical syntax (specifically, relative clauses in Middle Scots). Romaine’s pivotal work is followed by the publication of a special issue of Folia Linguistica Historica (1985, 6.1), edited by Suzanne Romaine and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, which derives from the Workshop on Socio-historical Linguistics held at the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań) in 1983. This points to the sizable impact of the emerging discipline to linguistic research in general. In their preface to the volume, Romaine and Traugott introduce the fundamental theoretical issue that the interdisciplinary field of “socio-historical linguistics” aims at addressing, namely the influence that social factors exert on language change © 2016 Cinzia Russi This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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 Introduction

(5).1 By the end of the 1980s, historical sociolinguistics appears to have secured its own place in the field of linguistics, as attested by Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s (1987) influential study on auxiliary do in eighteenth-century English, as well as by Romaine (1988), which provides the first systematic sketch of the discipline, paying particular attention to problems related to methodology.2 The 1990s witness an increasing diversification in the research agenda of historical sociolinguistics although, overall, methodological issues continue to receive emphasis. In addition, English (and Germanic languages) continue to have preferential status as languages under analysis, thus confirming the on-going development of the discipline (Willemyns and Vandenbussche, 2006: 146). Among the many notable contributions that appeared in the last decade of the twentieth century are Machan and Scott (1992); Milroy (1992); Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1996); Ammon, Mattheier and Nelde (1999), Jahr (1999). Jahr (1999) is of particular interest since this volume includes articles that address important theoretical and methodological issues (e.g., Awedyk’s paper, where traditional historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics are compared and assessed with respect to each other, and also Oksaar’s and Milroy’s contributions).3 Furthermore, the papers in this volume deal with topics that are of crucial relevance in historical sociolinguistic research, such as language death, code-switching, bi-/multilingualism and language contact, and bring into the discussion languages other than English (specifically, Polish and Norwegian).4 Even though English still remains (by far, or definitely to the greatest extent) the best represented language in historical sociolinguistic research,5 followed by German, within the last decade or so leading publishing companies have been devoting more space to studies on the historical sociolinguistics of other

1 Historical sociolinguistics has become the most commonly used term today; it seems to have made its first appearance in Richter (1985), and was then adopted by Romaine (1988) and Mattheier (1988). It is, in fact, the title of part XII of the handbook, Sociolinguistics/Sociolinguistik, edited by Ammon, Dittmar and Mattheier (1988), which includes Romaine’s and Mattheier’s chapters, and gained dominance by the early 1990s (e.g., Milroy 1992). 2 Anttila (1989: 47) also highlights the importance of variation and the social dimension in diachronic linguistics, stating that “social variation must be included in the background as a necessary prerequisite for understanding change”. Cf. also Joseph (1992) on the importance of speakers for the analysis of language change. 3 Interestingly, Jahr (1999: v) begins the preface to the volume by remarking that “[d]uring the past three decades, with sociolinguistics emerging as a major field of linguistic research, historical sociolinguistics has been established as an important subfield of historical linguistics” (first emphasis in original, second emphasis added, CR). 4 Other studies from the 1990s concerned with other languages are Gimeno (1995) on Spanish, Maia (1995) and Carvalho (1998) on Portuguese, as well as Joseph and Wallace (1992) on socially motivated variation in Latin. 5 The centrality of English in the discipline is also attested by Nevalainen’s (2006, 2012) chapters specifically devoted to English historical sociolinguistics.



Historical sociolinguistics: Origins and developments 

 3

languages. The most recent publications that approach languages other than English are: Jahr (2001) on Norwegian; Rindler Schjerve (2003) on language contact in the Romance/Slavonic area; Burke (2005) and Rutten and van der Wal (2014) on Dutch; Ayres-Bennet (2004) and Lodge (2004) on French, and Rjéoutski, Argent and Offord (2014) on French and Francophonie. In addition, different European languages and varieties are examined in the contributions in Braunmüller and Ferraresi (2003); Langer, Davies and Vandenbussche (2012); Rutten, Vosters and Vandenbussche (2014); Havinga and Langer (2015). The twenty-first century officially marks the establishment of historical sociolinguistics as a separate independent field of linguistic inquiry, and its theoretical and empirical advances are reflected in the profuse, thriving body of publications of a variety of types. General introductory overviews of the discipline, which are aimed at both outlining its basic assumptions and assessing its theoretical and methodological perspectives include several handbook chapters, such as Romaine (2005); Roberge (2006); Nevalainen (2011); Conde-Silevestre and Hernández-Campoy (2012); Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2012), as well as chapters in edited volumes (e.g., Davies, Langer and Vandenbussche, 2012; Joseph, 2012).6 Noteworthy monographs are: Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003); Ayres-Bennet (2004); Burke (2004), (2005); Deumert (2004); Lodge (2004); Bergs (2005); Conde-Silvestre (2007); Sairio (2009); Millar (2010), (2012); Trudgill (2010); Watts (2011). Noteworthy edited volumes include: Kastovsky and Mettinger (2000); Sokoll (2001); Braunmüller and Ferraresi (2003); Deumert and Vandenbussche (2003); Davies and Langer (2006); Elspaß et al. (2007); Vandenbussche and Elspaß (2007); Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2008); Nurmi, Nevala and Palander-Collin (2009); Schendl and Wright (2011); Langer, Davies and Vandenbussche (2012); van der Wal and Rutten (2013); Millar, Barras and Bonnici (2014); Rjéoutski, Argent and Offord (2014); Havinga and Langer (2015). Standing out as a milestone publication is The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics (2012), edited by Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre, which successfully achieves its objective of presenting “an up-to-date and in-depth exploration of the extent to which sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be applied to the process of reconstruction of past languages in order to account for diachronic linguistic changes and developments” (p. 4). Finally, within the domain of publication, the recent launching of two book series dedicated specifically to historical sociolinguistics by two world-leading publishers in linguistics clearly demonstrates that the discipline is thriving. The first is Advances

6 See also Nevalainen (2006, 2012) for more specific references to English, and Auer et al. (2015). Another important contribution is Willemyns and Vandenbussche (2006), since it draws attention to historical sociolinguistic research in languages other than English, specifically German and Dutch. Cf. also Janda and Joseph (2003).

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 Introduction

in Historical Sociolinguistics (John Benjamins, edited by Terttu Nevalainen and Marijke van der Wal), which presently includes five volumes (van der Wal and Rutten, 2013; Rutten and van der Wal, 2014; Rutten, Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2014; Bös and Kornexl, 2015; Dossena, 2015). The second, Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies on Language and Society in the Past (Peter Lang, Oxford; edited by Nils Langer, Stephan Elspaß, Joseph Salmons and Wim Vandenbussche), currently features three volumes (Rjéoutski, Argent and Offord, 2014; Havinga and Langer, 2015; Andrade Ciudad, 2016). Other noteworthy landmarks in the advancement of the field are the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN, hison.sbg.ac.at), an informal association (without membership or a formal executive committee) founded in 2005, which gathers scholars concerned with all aspects of historical sociolinguistics and regularly organizes international conferences, workshops and annual summer schools, and the Research Unit for the study of Variation, Contact and Change in English (Varieng, www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/index.html) established in 2007 at the University of Helsinki under the direction of Terttu Nevalainen, which publishes the online series Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English that currently features 15 thematic volumes.7 As for the latest developments, a key event is the foundation in 2015 of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics  (JHSL), a double-blind peer-reviewed journal “specifically focused on the study of language in its social and historical context” (Auer et al., 2015: 4).

1.2 Historical sociolinguistics: The field This section provides a concise review of the primary objectives, core theoretical and methodological assumptions and main research topics of historical sociolinguistics.8 Conde-Silvestre and Hernández-Campoy (2012: 1) characterize historical sociolinguistics as “a hybrid subfield subsisting on the interdisciplinary character of sociolinguistic methodology” or, in a broader sense, as “the reconstruction of the history of a given language in its socio-cultural contexts”, while Nevalainen (2011), expressing a view that reminds us of Jahr’s (1999) definition (see fn. 3), labels it as “a subdiscipline at the interface of sociolinguistics and historical linguistics” (279).

7 Another valuable electronic publication platform is the online journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical linguistics (www.hum2.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/index.html), which was maintained at Leiden University under the editorship of Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade from 200 to 2011 and features 10 original articles and 29 book reviews. 8 For more detailed overviews the reader is referred to the literature cited in Section 1.



Historical sociolinguistics: The field 

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A fundamental assumption of historical sociolinguistics is that “language is both a historical and social product, and must therefore be explained with reference to the historical and social forces which have shaped its use” (Romaine, 2005: 1696). In other words, language internal and language external factors are systematically interconnected in language change so that they “must be studied in their mutual interaction, to the extent that this is practicable” (Roberge 2006: 2308). Related to this assumption is the principle that “synchronic variation of the type investigated by sociolinguistics represents a stage in long term change” (Romaine, 2005: 1696). The prime objective of historical sociolinguistics is “to investigate and provide an account of the forms and uses in which variation may manifest itself in a given speech community over time, and how particular functions, uses and kinds of variation develop within particular language varieties, speech communities, social networks and individuals” (Romaine, 2005: 1697). Or, in the words of Auer et al. (2015: 9) “historical sociolinguistics par excellence aims to study language use, as produced by individual language users, embedded in the social context in which these language users operate, and [is] understood not only from a communicative angle but also as conscious or unconscious acts of identity and social distinction”. Thus, historical sociolinguistics requires the application of theoretical tenets and methodologies employed by contemporary sociolinguistics in the study of language changes that have occurred in the past. The extension of frameworks developed for the analysis of synchronic variation to the investigation of diachronic change is validated by the uniformitarian principle, which advocates the view that the forces responsible for language change “operate today the same way that they have in the past” (Labov, 1972: 275) or, in Lass’s (1997: 25) words, that “[w]hat we can say today about any aspect of the past in any domain has to be constrained by the (known or hypothesized) properties of its present-day analogues”, so that “there is no reason for believing that language did not vary in the same patterned way in the past as it has been observed to do today” (Romaine, 1988: 1454).9 Bergs (2012) offers valuable insights on the applicability of the uniformitarian principle to historical sociolinguistics. Through a careful review of three case studies, he successfully shows how applying indiscriminately the uniformitarian principle in historical sociolinguistic research “may easily result in anachronisms” (96), since many of the social variables taken into consideration by sociolinguists do not actually exist per se but rather hinge “both on the definition and the empirical data that we use to evaluate a given state of affairs in relation to our definition” (84). The extendibility of the uniformitarian principle to historical sociolinguistics, then, must be handled with caution and “every language period and every linguistic community must be investigated independently and on

9 A detailed discussion of the origins and history of the uniformitarian principle can be found in Janda and Joseph (2003); see also Bergs (2012).

6 

 Introduction

its own right” (96). In other words, the uniformitarian principle “should be tested, whenever possible, with empirical data” (Nevalainen, 2011: 280). If historical sociolinguistics needs to go beyond the straightforward application of current sociolinguistic approaches and analyses to historical settings, then the historical sociolinguist’s crucial endeavor is “to try to discover how different the past was” (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 2012: 26, original emphasis). Therefore, regarding methodology, it becomes essential to build a set of procedures that will allow to reconstruct (stages of) language in its social context, making use of the results of sociolinguistic research as “controls on the processes of reconstruction and as means of informing theories of change” (Romaine, 2005: 1697). This implies combining “methods from the rich philological tradition of textual interpretation with recent work within the field of quantitative sociolinguistics and the study of literacy, discourse and pragmatics” (Romaine, 2005: 1697), as well as adopting a variety of paradigms and research orientations which renders historical sociolinguistics an inherently inter- and cross-disciplinary field, which according to Bergs (2005: 8–9) is hybrid in nature and lies at the intersection of linguistics, social sciences, and history. The numerous (sub-)disciplines from which historical sociolinguists can draw constructive inspiration and helpful analytical tools would then include philology, paleography, discourse and genre studies, literacy studies social history and cultural history, corpus linguistics, modern sociolinguistics, sociology and social psychology. A thorny issue for historical sociolinguistics is the data, that is, the fact that one must work with “imperfect” (Janda and Joseph, 2003: 14) or “bad data” (Labov, 1994: 11). Besides lacking access to controlled experiments and living native speakers, the body of linguistic material at one’s disposal is often limited and/or incomplete. Moreover, data collection, which plays a fundamental role in research based primarily or essentially on empirical data and also determines methodology (i.e., quantitative and/or qualitative approach), may be challenging due to the mode of preservation of the available sources. Hence, it becomes essential to create (and maintain) large systematic diachronic corpora, possibly varied and properly annotated with extralinguistic information (social and stylistic), which allow historical sociolinguists to examine language change over extended periods of time (Nevalainen, 2011: 289). Another problematic issue related to data is that authentic material comes primarily (if not exclusively) from the literate portion of the population, which constitutes a rather small percentage, since in the past the great majority of the population was uneducated (Nevalainen, 2011: 281), whereas “access to data from a large reference group, population, or corpus is necessary in studies that endeavor to place individuals, groups of people, or texts within their communities, social networks, genres, or other relevant categories” (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 2012: 24). Furthermore, the fact that the data that historical sociolinguists work with is (inevitably) written may appear problematic given the preference (priority) that sociolinguistics grants to oral data, which are traditionally linked to lower levels of formality and consequently considered better representative of ‘actual’ language.



Historical sociolinguistics: The field 

 7

However, historical linguists have long recognized the need to treat the written language in its own right, concluding that “writing and reading are not necessarily associated with the formal end of the continuum” (Romaine, 1988: 1461), and it has been convincingly shown that sociolinguistic variation manifests itself also in written data and that written data can be used to reconstruct diachronic variation in speech. For instance, phonological variation can be recorded in writing and verse form (as in the case of Middle English [Nevalainen, 2011: 281]), as well as in grammars, or literary parody (cf. Lodge, 2004 for early modern French). For the most part, however, data from written sources are heavily skewed toward learned classes, which clearly poses significant limitations to the achievement of a complete and accurate characterization of the social distribution of linguistic features at a given period in the past. It becomes then a chief concern of historical linguistics to overcome the social bias connected to class, education and literacy; this can be accomplished by exploiting sources from segments of society that overall have remained unexplored in traditional historical linguistics (i.e., lower classes), which allows us to draw a “language history from below” (Elspaß, 2005; Elspaß, Langer, Scharloth and Vandenbussche, 2007). In this respect, data from sources such as ego-documents, have been receiving growing attention. These comprise (personal) correspondence, which “(often regarded as casual) can range from formal reports, requests, or summonses, to chatty gossip” (Romaine, 1988: 1461), as well as trial proceedings, diaries, travelogues, drama texts, sermons, and proclamations (see van der Wal and Rutten, 2013). Current historical sociolinguistic research is concerned with a wide range of topics related to the dynamics of the embedding of different language(s) and varieties in complex societies, such as multilingualism, code-switching and language contact, migration, language planning and policy and standardization (e.g., Deumert and Vandenbussche, 2003; Rutten, Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2014). Also of interest are issues related to the impact that the architecture of modern society and the institutional modern state exert over the diachronic development of languages and language varieties (i.e., urbanization, industrialization, verticalization of society), as well as the interaction between language and power in language use and in the representation of social inequity in language. The progress of synchronic sociolinguistics research during the last three decades has been viewed as shaped by three main waves (Eckert, 2012). The first wave is marked by quantitative analyses of variability linked to the demographic categories of class, age, gender and ethnic background; “[t]he perspective of the first wave on meaning was based in the socioeconomic hierarchy: Variables were taken to mark socioeconomic status, and stylistic and gender dynamics were seen as resulting from the effects of these categories on speakers’ orientation to their assigned place in that hierarchy” (Eckert, 2012: 90). The second wave is oriented by ethnographic-based approaches and aims at identifying the local dynamics of variation; it starts “with the attribution of social agency to the use of vernacular as well as standard features and a focus on the vernacular as an expression of local or class identity” (Eckert,

8 

 Introduction

2012: 90) and searches for “local categories that could shed light on the relevance of macrosociological categories for life in the local setting, drawing a direct relation between the social dynamics giving rise to these categories and the use of linguistic variables” (Eckert, 2012: 91). Thus, studies in the first and second wave “focused on apparently static categories of speakers and equated identity with category affiliation” (Eckert, 2012: 93). The third wave shifts its attention to “the linguistic practice in which speakers place themselves in the social landscape through stylistic practice” (Eckert, 2012: 93); variation is no longer interpreted as a secondary outcome of social dimensions, rather, it is perceived as a fundamental feature of language: it represents “a social semiotic system capable of expressing the full range of a community’s social concerns” (Eckert, 2012: 94). Since these concerns are in constant change, the essential feature of variables is to be identified in indexical mutability, which “is achieved in stylistic practice, as speakers make social-semiotic moves, reinterpreting variables and combining and recombining them” (Eckert, 2012: 94). The third wave, then, embraces the notion that variation patterns ensue from the active (stylistic) production of social stratification and shifts its focus to stylistic practice and how speakers become “stylistic agents, tailoring linguistic styles in ongoing and lifelong projects of self-construction and differentiation” (Eckert, 2012: 98). Historical sociolinguistics has tagged along producing a rich body of research that falls within the domain of the the first and second wave (e.g., Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 1996; 2003; Conde-Silvestre, 2007; Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre, 2012), but it still lags behind as far as approaches within the third wave (but see the articles in Kopaczyk and Jucker, 2013 and Conde-Silvestre, this volume). Conde-Silvestre and Hernández-Campoy (2012: 1–2) identify one of the most valuable achievements of historical sociolinguistics as “its contribution to enriching the dialogue between present and past in linguistic research” by showing that employing ‘synchronic’ methodologies may enhance the understanding of diachronic changes, that is, “[i]n making the study of diachrony responsive to sociolinguistic data” (Romaine, 1988: 1466), historical sociolinguistics has succeeded in refreshing ‘traditional’ historical linguistics as well as in strengthening sociolinguistics.

1.3 The present volume The first chapter of the volume, “Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles”, by Georgios Alexandropoulos, is an interdisciplinary study of the linguistic and stylistic strategies employed by four Greek Christian orators – Athenagoras, Tatian, Justin Martyr and Gregory Nazianzen – to convey their opposition to the ideology and religious system of the Gentiles (i.e., pagans and idol worshippers), and it focuses on the analysis of mechanisms for expressing contradiction. Alexandropoulos maintains that the language and style of the four orators considered were influenced by both their personal beliefs and attitudes, as well



The present volume 

 9

as the socio-cultural dynamics of their time. Moreover, he suggests that the different stages that characterized the relationship between the Christian and the Gentiles are reflected in their linguistic and stylistic choices either as an effort at uncovering a common ground between the two groups or as a way to underscore the superiority of Christianity. In their attempts at demonstrating and promoting the superiority of the Christian faith, Athenagoras and Justin adopt a ‘comparative’ approach by seeking similarities between the theological systems of the two groups and accomplish their goal through the use of personal pronouns, intertextual sources, representative speech acts, and the rhetorical relations of contrast and antithesis. Tatian and Gregory, on the other hand, display a sarcastic, confrontational and antagonistic attitude; they aim at diminishing the rival group and promoting themselves and their supporters, making use of irony, intertextuality, superlatives, and directive speech acts. J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre’s chapter, “A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence: Evidence from the Stonor Letters”, is a valuable addition to the currently limited body of historical sociolinguistic research framed within the third-wave approach (see Introduction, Section 1). Drawing on evidence from a selection of letters included in The Stonor Letters and Papers (Carpenter 1996), Conde-Silvestre reconstructs a ‘community of practice’– a network of people united by a common endeavor, due to which they come to share behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values (i.e., ‘practices’), so that social relations and activities become interrelated defining each other – namely, the community of practice centered around Thomas Stonor II, a member of a country gentry family of Oxfordshire in the midfifteenth century. The common endeavors pursued by the members of this network are identified as partaking in actions of enfeoffment and performing services for the community, and their success hinged on a mutual feeling of trustworthiness. CondeSilvestre thus identifies mutual trustworthiness as a crucial social meaning developed by the members of this community of practice through mutual interaction, which must have been embodied in their letters. The linguistic analysis of fifteen letters addressed to Thomas Stonor II, written by eight different members of the community between 1463 and 1472, is carried out by applying two methods successfully employed in corpus linguistics, keyness and n-gram (lexical bundle), and reveals common patterns of variation supporting Conde-Silvestre’s proposal that mutual trustworthiness was indeed a main social meaning characterizing the community of practice under examination. High rates of positive keyness for the word ‘cousin’ (appearing in the corpus in four different orthographic variants) emerge from the analysis, showing that ‘cousin’ was a highly recurrent term of address in the letters (i.e., “an emblematic option”; p. 59). Furthermore, this term was not confined to denote kinship but was often used to refer to mutual close friendship and shows high rates of collocation with the adjective worshipfull, ‘worshipful’. The frequent extension of ‘cousin’ to the domain of mutual close friendship and its tendency to collocate with the adjective ‘worshipful’ clearly attests to mutual trustworthiness being a fundamental social meaning within the community of practice of Thomas Stonor II.

10 

 Introduction

In “Advice to prospectors (and others). Knowledge dissemination, power and persuasion in Late Modern English emigrants’ guides and correspondence”, Marina Dossena examines nineteenth-century documents intended to disseminate information to British prospective emigrants to Canada and the US to highlight the importance of knowledge dissemination in the establishment and maintenance of networks. Her main objective is to uncover key linguistic strategies employed to heighten the overall persuasiveness of the information provided and invite trust in it. Taking into consideration published material (i.e., books and articles in popular journals and magazines) and ‘ego documents’ (i.e., travelogues meant for private circulation and correspondence) allows her to draw on evidence from different levels of literacy. Moreover, by looking at both content and the supplementary materials included in the texts she gains deeper insights into the persuasive quality of the texts. Dossena shows that all the materials are characterized by an interesting and finely balanced coexistence of objectivity and subjectivity, which warrants their viability and strengthens the reliability of their content. In particular, the subjectivity of the evaluations requires careful negotiation to make them acceptable to the recipients: information needs to be provided clearly and satisfactorily in order to reduce the psychological distance between author and audience. The authors’ knowledge and experiences are emphasized together with the effectiveness of the views and proposals provided in the texts to build a virtual dialogue among the participants. This promotes and ensures the creation of new networks in which readers can feel like members of a new discourse community where expertise is disseminated accurately and efficiently. “Language policy in the Long Nineteenth Century: Catalonia and Schleswig” by James Hawkey and Nils Langer investigates the impact of language policies on the development of modern European nationalism. The chapter examines hegemonic language ideologies in conjunction with specific instances of language status, corpus, and acquisition planning in state-nations and nation-states in order to offer a contrastive analysis of the metalinguistic history of two multilingual regions (Catalonia and Schleswig) which hold a conspicuous position in current language-policy debates. Hawkey and Langer show that visible parallels can be identified between Catalan and Low German concerning the arguments in support of a particular regional language, since both regions overall follow the established patterns expected from historical language planning of the period. In both cases, the nationalist agenda was served by acquisition programs aimed at homogenizing the population through mediumof-instruction choice. Moreover, successful language standardization bodies were founded, and a high degree of domain specification for national and non-national languages emerged in burgeoning nation-states, which saw linguistic and cultural unity as vital. Important differences, however, mark the historical sociolinguistics of Schleswig and Catalonia with respect to practical outcomes of the debates on language policy and the status of other regional languages, and some notable counterexamples to accepted classificatory findings in the field of historical language policy are evidenced; for instance, the success of standardization programs that do



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 11

not fit hegemonic nationalist ideologies and the amount of overt reference to domain specification for languages in state-nation situations. “Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research: Samples from the Paston Letters”, by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy, tackles two controversial issues (authorship and gender) pertaining to the study of epistolary documents drawing from data from the Paston Letters, a collection of letters and notes written by three generations of the Paston family (from Norfolk, England) in the course of the fifteenth century. Focusing on the letters by female members who, being illiterate, dictated (or gave instructions) to scribes, secretaries, or even male family members, Hernández-Campoy assesses to what extent the language preference and practices of the authors, the scribes, or both are displayed in dictated letters, and if dictation affects phonological or orthographic variables rather than morpho-syntactic or lexical ones. Three sets of variables are taken into consideration, all linked to ongoing changes: (i) the use of the Old English southern Anglo-Saxon h-pronouns vs. the Old English northern Scandinavian th-pronouns; (ii) the spread of the relative pronoun which to inanimate referents; and (iii) the use of the innovative orthographic variant vs. the conservative in the spelling of the th-pronouns. Hernández-Campoy’s results reveal a substantial degree of inter-and intra-generational variation. Concerning the forms of the pronouns, the male members of the family emerge as the precursors in the switch to the innovative th-forms. In contrast, regarding the relative pronoun, even though the entire family displays a clear preference for the use of which with inanimate antecedents, the female members appear to lead the change. As for the distribution of and , the women’s letters reveal a totally random, chaotic variation, which indicates that they were dictated to different scribes and that their hand is visible only in the orthography. Hernández-Campoy thus concludes that, with respect to orthography, the females’ letters conform to the scribes’ language practices whereas in terms of morphosyntactic features they clearly reflect the language of the Paston women. In “Dialect death? The present state of the dialects of the Scottish fishing communities”, Robert McColl Millar analyzes the loss of traditional dialect lexis in some fishing communities of eastern Scotland. His main goal is to uncover the linguistic changes brought about by the weakening (or perhaps even loss) of the inherent link between these communities and what was once their main trade (and culture), which resulted from various factors (e.g., depleting fish stocks in the North Sea during the twentieth century, changes in consumption habits, changes in the economy hindering the sustainability of the smaller fishing communities). In order to assess if we are witnessing a case of dialect death, Millar frames his findings in the context of the ongoing development of regional koines. The study reveals that local phonological features remain fairly stable in the developing koine, with only some relatively minor pronunciation differences found between the fishing communities and their rural hinterlands. In contrast, local lexical items evidence a noticeable distancing from the dialect; specifically, surviving words or phrases tend to undergo

12 

 Introduction

semantic expansion, consequently losing the precision associated with them even in current resources, and even the oldest speakers do not consistently use lexical items they know. The retention of specialist items can often be ascribed, Millar maintains, to the highly marked knowledge of some young speakers (women in particular) who work in the heritage industry: “[w]ithout this prop, it is unlikely that much specifically local lexis would have survived at all among the younger speakers. […] Much that was once local and associated with the community largely in an unmarked and at most semi-conscious way has either been lost altogether, simplified in association or remembered rather than used.” (p. 159). Hanna Rutkowska’s chapter, “Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books: Grapheme  distribution and vowel length indication”, addresses the regularization and standardization of English orthography, which remains a currently contentious and overall under-researched issue. The chapter offers a comparative analysis of the orthography of the editions of The Schoole of Vertue (a manual of good conduct for children published between 1557 and 1687) with the objective of evaluating the consistency in the orthographic systems of sixteenth and seventeenth-century printers and identifying possible effects by normative writings. Rutkowska’s main concern is examining how selected orthographic variables are realized in the different editions considered, and how their realization changes across them. After identifying the different patterns of distribution and change of the variants, she compares them to the prescriptive and proscriptive sanctions of contemporary language authorities in order to evaluate the influence they may have had on the printers’ choices. Among her main findings are the following: (i) orthographic regularization took place in stages; (ii) differences in typeface and between lower-case and upper-case letters are to be considered when assessing the dating of documents whose date is not given; (iii) the groups of lexemes a given word belongs to affect the dynamics of the regularization of the marking of vowel length, and grouping of lexemes is linked to the Middle English vowel in the word’s stem. Overall, Rutkowska concludes, although connections between theoreticians’ sanctions and printers’ practice can be traced, a precise causeand-effect relationship between the two cannot be proven, and the degree to which the new spelling patterns and usages stemmed out of theoreticians’ recommendations, were the product of printers’ house styles, or resulted from compromises between theoreticians and printers still remains controversial. In “Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch”, Gijsbert Rutten challenges previous views according to which Dutch underwent a historical development from diglossia to diaglossia, as well as the theories of standardization they invoke. The analysis of individual variation in the expression of negation in a corpus of Dutch private correspondence (the Letters As Loot (LAL) Corpus which includes letters dated from the 1660s/1670s written by both men and women from different social classes), provides empirical evidence that clearly indicates that a situation of diaglossia characterized Dutch already in the Early and Late Modern period. This stage of diaglossia is evinced by the individual patterns



The present volume 

 13

in the use of negation and the high degree of inter- and intra-speaker alternation between single and bipartite negative constructions. During this period though, single negation became the conventional supralocal form favored in writing (quite likely powered by its diffusion in the spoken language). Since the standardization of Dutch is datable/dates to the early 1800 whereas single negation had become the common supralocal variant in northern Dutch during the seventeenth century, Rutten proposes that the term supralocalization more satisfactorily applies to the situation of Dutch, concluding that “[w]ith standardization feeding upon earlier instances of supralocalization, single negation thus became the standard Dutch variant without, however, ever being standardized” (page 214). Anni Sairio’s chapter, “ ‘Like a pack-hors trying to copy after an antilope’: A case study of eighteenth-century non-native English”, presents a case study of the private and public writings of Joseph Emin, an Armenian gentleman officer and freedom fighter who emigrated to England in 1751. The study addresses a topic that remains overall unexplored, historical L2 English, and provides an empirical assessment of historical L2 English before English reached the status of world language and completed its final stages of codification. Sairio is concerned with two main issues: (i) the selection of different variants by the L2 writer in situations of language variation and how these choices compare to contemporary L1 patterns, and (ii) L2 writers’ dynamics of construction of social and cultural identities in Late Modern L2 English. Given that two orthographic standards co-existed in the eighteenth century (for public and private writing), substantial orthographic variation, which carried social meaning, characterized Late Modern English. Sairio conducts a sociolinguistic corpus analysis of the variation between full and contracted spellings in Emin’s personal letters, compares it with contemporary L1 spelling practices, then contextualizes her results with reference to eighteenth-century linguistic prescriptivism and its influence on L2 spelling. Her main focus is on Emin’s sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic competence relating to his access to and awareness of contemporary L1 prestige patterns and language practices in relevant L1 social networks. “A mensa et thoro. On the tense relationship between literacy and the spoken word in early modern times”, by Anja Voeste, addresses the issue of speakers’ awareness of the dissociation between spoken and written language in eighteenthcentury Germany, presenting four case studies on different language domains (syntax, morphology and graphematics). The increasing disparity between spoken and written registers, Voeste suggests, affected both the lower uneducated classes and the more literate bourgeois classes, whose members increasingly aspired to attain a career in the civil service. As literacy and the perception of differentiated social requirements grew, speakers’ awareness of their restricted oral competences also increased: speakers started to doubt their own linguistic competence, particularly concerning inflectional morphology and spelling. This led them to intentionally employ older and more prestigious variants characteristic of the written language, and to look for ‘correct’ variants in the expanding body of grammars and reference

14 

 Introduction

books. The case studies presented reveal spelling to be the domain in which the newly educated classes struggled the most to achieve the proficiency in erudite standards, while syntactic and morphological features overall seem to have been mastered with less difficulty given that they could be detected through read-aloud texts. Misspellings, Voeste proposes, may signal the speaker’s struggle in mastering learned vocabulary, as well as indicate that borrowed or infrequent unfamiliar words were mispronounced; therefore, low degree of literacy had significant repercussions on the spoken language and may have affected social recognition in an increasingly literate bourgeois society. Imperfect spelling, however, should not automatically be equated to unacquaintedness with important functions of writing, since even writers from the lower class attained levels of literacy which enabled them to voice their feelings effectively or to use reading and writing as practices to withdraw from hostile environments. Voeste thus concludes that literacy and spelling contributed equally to the achievement of a skilled control of the spoken language.

References Aitchison, Jean. 2012. Diachrony vs synchrony: the complementary evolution of two (ir)reconcilable dimensions. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 11–21. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Ammon, Ulrich, Klaus J. Mattheier & P. H. Nelde (eds.). 1999. Historische Soziolinguistik/Historical sociolinguistics/La linguistique historique (Sociolinguistica 13). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Andreade Ciudad, Luis. 2016. The Spanish of the Northern Peruvian Andes (Historical Sociolinguistics 3). Oxford: Peter Lang. Anttila, Raimo. 1989. Historical and comparative linguistics, 2nd edn. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 6). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Auer, Anita, Catharina Peersman, Simon Pickl, Gijsbert Rutten & Rik Vosters. 2015. Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 1(1). 1–12. Awedyk, Wiesław. 1999. Traditional historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. In Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language change: Advances in historical linguistics (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 114), 37–44. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ayres-Bennet, Wendy. 2004. Sociolinguistic variation in seventeenth-century France. Methodology and case studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergs, Alexander. 2005. Social networks and historical sociolinguistics: Studies in morphosyntactic variation in the Paston Letters 1421–1503 (Topics in English Linguistics 51). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bergs, Alexander. 2012. The uniformitarian principle and the risk of anachronism in language and social history. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 80–98. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell Bös, Birte & Lucia Kornexl (eds.). 2015. Changing genre conventions in historical English new discourse (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 5). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Braunmüller, Kurt & Giselle Ferraresi (eds.). 2003. Aspects of multilingualism in European language history (Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism 2). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Burke, Peter. 2004. Languages and communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burke, Peter. 2005. Toward a social history of Early Modern Dutch. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Carpenter, Christine (ed.). 1996. Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carvalho, Maria José. 1998. Sociolinguística histórica: estatuto, metodologia e problemas. Revista Portuguesa de Filologia 22. 187–204. Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo. 2007. Sociolingüistica histórica. Madrid. Gredos. Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo & Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy. 2012. Introduction. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 1–8. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Davies, Winifred V. & Nils Langer. 2006. The making of bad languages (Variolingua. Nonstandard – Standard – Substandard 28). Oxford: Peter Lang. Davies, Steffan, Nils Langer & Wim Vandenbussche. 2012. Language and history, linguistics and historiography: interdisciplinary problems and opportunities. In Nils Langer, Steffan Davies & Wim Wandenbussche (eds.), Language and history, linguistics and historiography: Interdisciplinary approaches (Studies in Historical Linguistics 9), 3–14. Oxford: Peter Lang. Deumert, Ana. 2004. Language standardization and language change: The dynamics of Cape Dutch (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 19). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Deumert, Ana & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.). 2003. Germanic standardization: Past to present (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 18). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dossena, Marina (ed.). 2015. Transatlantic perspectives on Late Modern English. (Advances in Historical Linguistics 4). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Eckert, Penelope 2012. Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41. 87–100. Also available online at [Accessed 10/10/2015] Elspaß, Stephan. 2005. Language norm and language reality. Effectiveness and limits of prescriptivism in New High German. In Nils Langer & Winifred Davies (eds.), Linguistic purism in the Germanic languages (Studia Linguistica Germanica 75), 25–40. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.). 2007. Germanic language histories ‘from below’ (1700–2000) (Studia Linguistica Germanica 86). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gimeno, Francisco. 1995. Sociolingüística histórica: Siglos X–XII. Madrid: Visor. Havinga, Anna & Nils Langer (eds.). 2015. Invisible languages in the nineteenth century. (Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies on Language and Society in the Past 2). Oxford: Peter Lang. Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.). 2012. The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Jahr, Ernst Håkon (ed.). 1999. Language change: Advances in historical linguistics (Studies and Monographs 114). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Jahr, Ernst Håkon. 2001. Historical sociolinguistics. The role of Low German language contact in the Scandinavian typological shift. Lingua Posnaniensis 43. 95–104. Janda, Richard D. & Brian D. Joseph. 2003. On language, change, and language change – or of history of linguistics, and historical linguistics. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 3–180. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Joseph, Brian D. 1992. Diachronic explanations: putting speakers back into the picture. In Garry W. Davis & Gregory Iverson (eds.), Explanations in historical linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 84), 123–144. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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 Introduction

Joseph, Brian D. 2012. Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: Strange Bedfellows or Natural Friends. In Nils Langer, Steffan Davies & Vim Wandenbussche (eds.), Language and history, linguistics and historiography: Interdisciplinary approaches (Studies in Historical Linguistics 9), 67-88. Oxford: Peter Lang.  Joseph, Brian D. & Rex E. Wallace. 1992. Socially determined variation in ancient Rome. Language Variation and Change 4. 105–119. Kastovsky, Dieter & Arthur Mettinger (eds.). 2000. The history of English in a social context: Essays in historical sociolinguistics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kopaczyk, Joanna & Andreas H. Jucker (eds.). 2013. Communities of practice in the history of English (Pragmatics & Beyond New series 235). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Langer, Nils & Winifred V. Davies (eds.). 2005. Linguistic purism in the Germanic languages (Studia Linguistica Germanica 75). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Langer, Nils, Steffan Davies & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.). 2012. Language and history, linguistics and historiography: Interdisciplinary approaches (Studies in Historical Linguistics 9). Oxford: Peter Lang. Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 81). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lodge, R. Anthony. 2004. A sociolinguistic history of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machan, Tim William & Charles T. Scott (eds.). 1992. English in its social contexts: Essays in historical sociolinguistics. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Maia, Clarinda de Azevedo. 1995. Sociolinguística histórica e periodização linguístika. Algumas reflexões sobre a distinção entre português arcaico e português modern. Diacrítica 10. 3-30. Mattheier, Klaus J. 1988. Historische Soziolinguistik: das Verthälnis von sozialem und sprachlichem Wandel. In Unlrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An international handbook of the science of language and society, Volume 2, 1430-1452. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Millar, Robert McColl. 2010. Authority and identity: A sociolinguistic history of Europe before the Modern Age. Basingstoke: Pargrave Macmillan. Millar, Robert McColl. 2012. English historical sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Millar, Robert McColl, Robert, William Barras & Lisa Marie Bonnici (eds.). 2014. Lexical variation and attrition in the Scottish fishing communities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic variation and change. On the historical sociolinguistics of English. Oxford & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Milroy, James. 1999. Toward a speaker-based account of language change. In Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language change: Advances in historical linguistics (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 114), 21–36. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. Historical sociolinguistics and language change. In Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 558-588. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2011. Historical sociolinguistics. In Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone & Paul Kerswill (eds.), The Sage handbook of sociolinguistics, 279-295. London: Sage. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2012. New perspectives, theories and methods: historical sociolinguistics. In Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton (eds.), English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook, Volume 2, 1438-1457. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds.). 1996. Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: Linguistic change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2012. Historical sociolinguistics: origins, motivations, and paradigms. In Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 22–40. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Nurmi, Arja, Minna Nevala & Minna Palander-Collin (eds.). 2009. The language of daily life in England (1400–1800) (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 183). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Oksaar, Els. 1999. Social networks, communicative acts and the multilingual individual. Methodological issues in the field of language change. In Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language change: Advances in historical linguistics (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 114), 3–19. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Paul, Hermann. 1880. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle: Niemeyer. Richter, Michael. 1985. Towards a methodology of historical sociolinguistics. Folia Linguistica Historica 6(1). 41–61. Rindler Schjerve, Rosita. 2003. Diglossia and power: Language policies and practice in the 19th century Hasburg empire (Language, Power and Social Process 9). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rjéoutski, Vladislav, Gesine Argent & Derek Offord (eds.). 2014. European Francophonie: The social, political and cultural history of an international prestige language (Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies on Language and Society in the Past 1). Oxford: Peter Lang. Roberge, Paul. 2006. Language history and historical sociolinguistics/sprachegeschichte und historische soziolinguistik. In Unlrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society, Volume 3, 2307-2315. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Romaine, S. 1982. Socio-historical linguistics: Its status and methodology. Cambridge University Press. Romaine, Suzanne. 1988. Historical sociolinguistics: problems and methodology. In Unlrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An international handbook of the science of language and society/ Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft, Volume 2, 1452-1468. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Romaine, Suzanne. 2005. Historical sociolinguistics/ Historische soziolinguistik. In Unlrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An international handbook of the science of language and society/ Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft, Volume 2,1696-1703. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Rutten, Gijsbert & Marijke J. van der Wal. 2014. Letters as loot: A sociolinguistic approach to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 2). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Rutten, Gijsbert, Rik Vosters & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.). 2014. Norms and usage in language history, 1600-1900: A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 3). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sairio, Anni. 2009. Language and letters of the Bluestocking Network: Sociolinguistic issues in eighteenth-century epistolary English (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique 75). Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Schendl, Herbert & Laura Wright (eds.). 2011. Code-switching in the history of earlier English (Topics in English Linguistics 76). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sitta, Horst (ed.). 1980. Ansätze zu einer pragmatischen Sprachgeschichte. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

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Sokoll, Thomas (ed.). 2001. Essex pauper letters 1731–1837. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1987. The auxiliary do in eighteenth-century English: A sociohistorical linguistic approach. Dordrecht: Foris. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (ed.). 2008. Grammars, grammarians and grammar-writing in eighteenth-century England (Topics in English Linguistics 59). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter. 2010. Investigations in sociohistorical linguistics: stories of colonisation and contact. New York : Cambridge University Press. Vandenbussche, Wim & Stephan Elspaß (eds.). 2007. Lower class language use in the 19th century. Special issue of Multilingua. Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 26(2/3). van der Wal, Marijke J. & Gijsbert Rutten (eds.). 2013. Touching the past: Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 1). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Watts, Richard J. 2011. Language myths and the history of English (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov & Marvin I. Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Winfred P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics: A symposium, 95–195. Austin & London: University of Texas Press. Willemyns, Roland & Wim Vandenbussche. 2006. Historical sociolinguistics: Coming of age? Sociolinguistica. International Yearbook of European Sociolinguistics 20. 146–165.

Georgios Alexandropoulos

2 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles This chapter focuses on the analysis of the Christian writers in their speeches against the Gentiles. In this interdisciplinary study, classical texts are approached through linguistic tools and the main purpose is to describe how contrast is expressed in these treatises. The orators organize their texts in such a way so as to have favorable effects on the public. The contrast between the two religious groups, the Gentiles and the Christians, helps them to promote their beliefs by giving emphasis on themselves through a negative approach to other representations. Their linguistic choices aid them to promote their ideology and attack against Greek culture and religion. The linguistic devices of their ideology are going to be explored in this study, since in this way it will be possible to understand how their rhetorical speeches become means for the presentation of their ideological orientation. Keywords: antithesis, contrast, critical discourse analysis, historical linguistics, ideology, linguistic practice, mechanisms of expressing contradiction, rhetorical relations, sociolinguistics, speech acts.

2.1 Introduction This study focuses on the way in which the Christian orators (or Greek apologists) Athenagoras, Tatian, Justin Martyr and Gregory Nazianzen express their opposition to the religious system of the Ethnics. The term ‘Ethnics’ has religious significance and refers generally to pagans and idol worshippers. Young (1999: 81) argues that “the ‘primary motive’ of the Greek apologists of the second century was justification; justification of their unpopular – indeed, potentially dangerous – decision to turn their backs on the classical literature inherited from antiquity and the customs of their forefathers, thus abandoning the comfortable ethos of the Graeco-Roman synthesis into which they had been born, nurtured, and educated”. Athenagoras10 was an Athenian philosopher who lived during the second half of the second century and Tatian11 was an Assyrian early-Christian writer and theologian of the second century. This study relies on their speeches: A plea for the Christians

10 For more details about the life of Athenagoras, see Barnard (1972), Geffcken (1907), Rankin (2009). 11 For more details about the life of Tatian, see Barnard (1964), Burkill (1971), Daniel (1837), Grant (1953). © 2016 Georgios Alexandropoulos This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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and Address to the Greeks. Both speakers wrote these speeches in a period full of acts of violence between the Pagans and the Christians. Alexandropoulos (2014a: 49) maintains that Athenagoras produces an ideological speech, as he uses his theological message in a particular way to defend himself and his supporters, to gain more supporters and deny false accusations. He relies on rational arguments, organizing them through ideological relations, such as solutionhood, justification and contrast; he also uses personal pronouns in order to distinguish the participants in the communicative event and often uses lexical bundles that strengthen his arguments. His integrated intertextual sources support his arguments and then divide people into two groups, his supporters and his opponents. He is very careful in the organization of his message; he limits first-person verb forms and does not use the name of Christ anywhere, as a result of his benevolent disposition wishing to produce a text without biblical references, based exclusively on theological and philosophical arguments. Alexandropoulos (2014a: 73) also claims that Tatian has a very strict character and uses an ideological language with a variety of linguistic means such as directive speech acts, rhetorical relations as evidence, solutionhood and functions of the intertextual sources as contrast and background. He uses second-person plural verb forms and impersonal syntax so as to involve the audience and direct them into a particular way of thinking. His theological view leads him to organize his text in such a way as to influence the hearers. He condemns his opponents and tries to promote his opinion on the rights of Christians. According to Karadimas (2003: 39), “when Tatian set out to write his oration to the Greeks, he had already written (at least) three rhetorical speeches, each of a different kind: a deliberative one on εἰμαρμένη ‘fate’, a judicial one on accusations launched against Christians, and an epideictic one against the Greeks.” Justin Martyr, also known as Saint Justin (100–165 AD), was an early Christian apologist from the second century. 12 This study relies on his speeches First Apology (addressed to Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the Roman Senate) and Second Apology (addressed to the Roman Senate). In his speeches, he presents arguments that Christianity is superior to paganism. For this reason, pagans should convert and comprehend that only Christianity can produce better citizens for the state, because Christianity is the most useful philosophy for people’s life. Gregory Nazianzen lived between 328 and 330 AD.13 He was born in a village called Arianzos, near Nazianzus in Cappadocia. His parents were named Gregory and Nonna, Gorgonia was his sister and Caesarius his brother. His mother Nonna was pious and faithful and brought up her son according to the Christian tradition, even

12 For more details about the life of Justin Martyr see Grant (1988), Rivière (1907), Semisch (1840/1842). 13 For more details about Gregory the Theologian see Alexandropoulos (2013b, 2014b), Bernardi (1995).



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 21

though his father belonged to the sect of Ypsistarion. During his childhood, Gregory was very sensitive and studied philosophy, rhetoric and philology in Athens in 350 AD. He lived in Athens for about nine years and created a very important friendship with St. Basil, who also studied rhetoric in Athens. In 372, he became bishop of Sasima and in 378 he went to Constantinople in order to face up the Arians. He died at the age of 62, leaving behind remarkable cultural work. His ideology relied on principles such as patience, hospitality, piety, gentleness and humility. His theological thinking, his thoughtful writings, the intense poetry of his work and his contribution to the Church resulted in Gregory being characterized as a bright paragon of unique theological and spiritual beauty. In his own special way, he tried to reveal the truth and charity of God, promoting values and principles as charity, contempt of money, love and peace among people. This study also examines two invective speeches by Gregory Nazianzen against Julian the Emperor.14 Gregory wrote these speeches in response to the decree issued by the Emperor, in which he forbade Christian teachers to teach ancient Greek literature in schools, since it did not espouse the loyalty to the ancient gods that classical authors expressed through their works. Thus, the Holy Father seized the opportunity to generally stigmatize Julian’s attempt to restore and reconstitute the ancient religion in the Empire. According to Demoen (1996: 23) “the true purpose of these invective speeches is the definition of and the establishment of the right to the Hellenism rather than an attempt at getting even with the dead Julian or with the whole pagan range of thought for which this ‘antichrist’ stands. […] In this sense, one can also speak of a conscious and well-founded ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ in Gregory’s approach- which would eventually clear the way for the Christianization of Hellenism.” Demoen (1996: 21) also states that the adoption of the classical pagan culture within Christianity was indeed no undisputed matter in the fourth century and among Christian intellectuals, and that it was common practice to be corresponding about this culture, which was after all theirs as well. Like many of the earlier Christian authors, the fourth century Church Fathers also give evidence of this contradiction: after generally quite long rhetorical studies, they dissociated themselves from this profane education, advised caution in the use of pagan literature and reproached the heterodoxy for corrupting true faith through the application of dialectics and sophistics to it. Gregory is no exception in this matter.

14 Julian the Emperor was born in Constantinople in 331 A.D. Julian’s father, Julius Constantius, was a half-brother of Constantine the Great. For more details see Alexandropoulos (2013a), Athanassiadi (1992).

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The main objectives of this study can be summarized in the following questions: i. What are the stylistic devices for expressing contradiction? ii. Why are the orators saying what they are saying? iii. What do they want to achieve? iv. What is the impact of the historical and social situation on their linguistic choices? Language and style are strictly connected with the ideological intentionality of these particular orators, who try to persuade their audience about the rotten background of the Greeks, while promoting and emphasizing positive aspects of their religious ideology. This study will examine the linguistic practice of the selected ideological speeches and to this purpose a variety of models and theories is used.15 Focus will be given to the way in which the ideology of the speakers is integrated into these speeches, since, according to Fairclough (1992: 91) “ideologies arise in societies characterized by relations of domination on the basis of class, gender, cultural group, and so forth, and in so far as human beings are capable of transcending such societies, they are capable of transcending ideology.” For Fairclough (1992: 89), ideology is located both in structures (i.e., orders of discourse) which constitute the outcome of past events and the conditions for current events, and in events themselves as they reproduce and transform their conditioning structures. It is an accumulated and naturalized orientation which is built into norms and conventions, as well as an ongoing work to naturalize and denaturalize such orientations in a discursive event. According to Van Dijk (1997: 28) “the ideologies represent the underlying principles of social cognition, and thus form the basis of knowledge, attitudes and other, more specific beliefs shared by a group.” Van Dijk defines ideology as “social representation shared by social group” (1995: 18) and as the power to authorize the interest that eventually might represent the Us and Them group (1993a, 1998). van Dijk (2004) maintains that both these complementary strategies of positive self-representation (semantic macro-strategy of in-group) and negative other-representation (semantic macro-strategy of derogation of out-group) are materialized through some other discursive moves such as actor description, authority, burden, categorization, comparison, consensus, counterfactuals, disclaimer, euphemism, evidentiality, example/illustration, generalization, hyperbole, implication, irony, lexicalization, metaphor, self-glorification, norm expression, number game, polarization Us-Them, populism, presupposition, vagueness, victimization. Gramsci (1971) defines ideology as hegemony, as a process of legitimation and de-legitimation. According to Oktar (2001: 319) ideology can be interpreted along four axes: (i) express/emphasize information that is positive about us, (ii) express/

15 For the translation of these texts see http://www.earlychristianwritings.com (Roberts 1867) and http://www.tertullian.org/ (King 1888).



Introduction  

 23

emphasize information that is negative about them, (iii) suppress/de-emphasize information that is positive about them, and (iv) suppress/de-emphasize information that is negative about us. For the analysis of context, this study relies on Hymes (1964, 1974). The SPEAKING model proposed by Hymes is particularly effective and popular since it allows the comprehension of the complexity of all parameters that determine and affect the communicative capability and the communicative act. It is about the recording in an acronym, grid form of all those factors that concern and influence the speaker and the listener during the communicative act. These factors are introduced below: 1. SETTING. The natural environment or communication’s setting of conduct. It is either the natural frame in which the communicative episode takes place, that is to say the space and the time of the utterance, or the psychological frame, that is to say the speaker’s psychological situation. 2. PARTICIPANTS. The Participants in the communication. Not only the speaker and the recipient of the message, but all the individuals which are present in the communication practice, even if they are silent. Significant elements are not only the identity, age and sex of these individuals, but also their general psychological, social and cultural characteristics. 3. ENDS. The purposes, goals, outcomes and the final aspiration of communication. It is about the speaker’s intentions as well as the results of the communicative action. 4. ACTS. The speaking action and the subject of the statements. For the interpretation of speech acts, this study relies on Searle’s (1969, 1979, 1994, 1996a, 1996b) typology of speech acts, given below: a. Assertive speech acts: speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition. b. Directive speech acts: speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action. c. Commissive speech acts: speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action. d. Expressive speech acts: speech acts that express the speaker’s attitudes and emotions towards the proposition. e. Declarations: speech acts that change the reality in accordance with the proposition of the declaration. 5. KEY. The style and the tenor which are used to carry out the communication (for example sarcastic, hostile, etc.). Style, as a concept, has been a controversial issue among researchers as different researchers propose different definitions and accounts. For instance, Bally (1951) claims that stylistics studies the elements of a language organized from the point of view of its affective content; that is, the expression of emotion by language as well as the effect of language on emotions. For Mukarovsky (1964: 18), style is “the violation of the norm of the standard; its systematic violation is what makes possible the poetic utilization of the

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

language; without this possibility there would be no poetry”, while for Hymes (1964), style is to be investigated both as a deviation from a norm and as a system of coherent ways or patterns of doing things. Finally, Crystal (1987: 66) maintains that “style is seen as a selection from a group of linguistic features covering all possible aspects in language.” Sociolinguistic researchers concur that the terms style currently describes the social meaning of styles and the ways the latter form social categories (cf. Eckert and Rickford, 2001). Currently, with the advent of technology and corpus stylistics, scholars such as Biber and Burges (2001) use the ARCHER corpus to compare fictional styles of speech of men and women across three centuries. Mahlberg (2007) applies corpus stylistic tools to literature and has created and studied a corpus of twenty-three texts by Charles Dickens as well as an additional corpus of nineteenth century fiction focusing on word clusters. She states that “in literary criticism striking examples can easily receive attention. With the help of corpus linguistic tools and descriptive categories such striking examples can be seen as part of a bigger picture” (Mahlberg, 2007: 20). 6. INSTRUMENTALITIES. These are the channels and the communicative means that are used, as well as the codes that correspond with them, not only the linguistic ones, but also other features like gestures, grimaces, etc. 7. NORMS. The social rules, conventions and the regularities that rule the communication. 8. GENRE. The text type that is produced during the communicative event. As for the analysis of the rhetorical relation of contrast and antithesis, it is based on Rhetorical Structure Theory. Mann and Thompson (1986, 1988) and Mann, Matthiesen and Thompson (1992) propose a number of rhetorical relations (circumstances, solutionhood, elaboration, cause, result, purpose, condition, interpretation, evaluation, restatement, summary, sequence, contrast, motivation, antithesis, background, enablement, evidence, justify, concession, joint) which are expressed in any kind of text. These relations can describe the speakers’ rhetorical organization, as the Rhetorical Structure Theory can focus on the rhetorical goal of the text, combining the totality of its relations. These relations are divided into two parts: nucleus and satellite or nucleus and nucleus. The rhetorical relations among various parts of the texts enable us to understand how speakers create social groups in their effort to promote their ideology and gain more supporters in the framework of ideological cognition. The text is constituted by elements which in turn are split into smaller elements in each relation of textual elements; one of the sub-elements acquires prominent status as the nucleus, while the other elements are considered satellites. Thus, there can be a nucleus with one satellite or a nucleus with two satellites in the text. The nucleus bears the main part of the information and materializes the main objective of the text and therefore cannot be omitted. In contrast, satellites, which bear additional elements for the text’s meaning, can be omitted without affecting its coherence (Mann and Thompson, 1988: 244).



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 25

Speakers introduce intertextual sources into their text with an aim to empower their text’s persuasiveness. Frow (1986: 227) argues that the knowledge produced by texts is always relative to a definite social regulation of the uses and boundaries of interpretation. The historical problem of assessing the ideological intensity of a text, the degree of the breach it induces through ideological norms and the level at which this breach occurs is finally the problem of the historicity of reading: what we notice in a text is guided and limited by our situation within a field of ideological struggle. A concern with the lines of power which structure this situation precludes the relegation of the text to the apparently closed context of its initial writing. Fairclough (1992: 102–103) claims that the combination of hegemony theory with intertextuality is particularly fruitful. Not only can one chart the possibilities and limitations for intertextual processes within certain hegemonies and states of hegemonic struggle, but also conceptualize intertextual processes and processes of contesting and restructuring the orders of discourse as processes of the hegemonic struggle in the sphere of discourse, which have effects upon, as well as being affected by, the specific hegemonic struggle in a wider sense. In addition, Fairclough (2003: 130) states that “when different discourses come into conflict and particular discourses are contested, what is centrally contested is the power of these pre-constructed semantic systems to generate particular visions of the world, which may have the performative power to sustain or remake the world in their image, so to speak.” In this study, I adopt two strategies proposed by van Dijk (1993b, 2009), which focus on participants as social groups rather than individuals: positive selfpresentation and negative other-presentation. Moreover, I also adopt Bazerman and Prior’s (2004) model in an attempt to understand the functions of the intertextual source after recontextualization.16 The main purpose of this chapter is to describe the stylistic devices employed by Christians when expressing contradiction against the Gentiles. This chapter fits within the domain of historical sociolinguistic research because it aids us to understand how the ideology and the sociopolitical situation of the period between the second and the fourth century AD have an impact on the speakers’ stylistic choices. The stylistic choices of the orators examined create social networks and structures through the mechanisms of contradiction. Through the use of the linguistic mechanisms of contradiction, Athenagoras, Tatian, Justin the Martyr, Gregory Nazianzen position themselves with respect to the talk itself. The stylistic devices through which

16 The process of re-contextualization is, according to Fairclough (1992: 130–133), intensified because of the connection between linguistic practices of various institutions and various textual types, resulting in the creation of a network of constants of intertextualistic chains, on which the transformations of the texts take place each time. According to Linell (1998: 145) “selected parts of discourses and their meanings in the prior, ‘quoted’ discourse-in-context are used as resources in creating new meaning in the ‘quoting’ text and its communicative context.”

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

contradiction is expressed can enrich our understanding and critical interpretation of these ideological speeches in their ideological and historical context. Through this interdisciplinary study, an attempt is made to approach the style of Athenagoras, Tatian, Justin Martyr and Gregory Nazianzen in their effort to express their opposition to the religious system of the Gentiles. The adoption of van Dijk’s view – who resorts to social analysis, cognitive analysis and discourse analysis of the text in order to uncover the way speakers convey their ideological messages – allows for the use of a variety of models. This study analyses the communicative functions, the manipulation of the audience, the relationship of Christians with the Greeks and the impact of ideology of four Christian writers on their style by combining approaches from historical sociolinguistics, historical sociopragmatics and critical discourse analysis.17

2.2 Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians (Πρεσβεῖα περί Χριστιανῶν) 2.2.1 Context of the speech Athenagoras wrote this speech to respond to the three most frequently used charges against the Christians, namely: atheism, Thyestean feasts and incest. His purpose was to defend the Christians from the accusations that lead to persecution. Olson (1999: 62) writes that “Athenagoras wrote this speech in the form of an open letter to emperor Marcus Aurelius when he was about to visit Athens. Like Justin and other apologists he tried to persuade the Emperor to cease persecuting Christians, and one of his main strategies was to refute the most common false accusations and rumors about them.”

2.2.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction My purpose is to examine the way in which Athenagoras expresses his ideology and how his ideological intentionality directs him to follow particular linguistic mechanisms in his attempt to persuade through the approach of contrast between the Christians and the Gentiles. Through the linguistic mechanisms of contradiction he tries to divide the audience into followers, supporters, non-followers and nonsupporters. In the example in (1), Athenagoras utilizes first and second plural personal pronouns in order to make comprehensible the difference between the behavior of the Christians and that of the Gentiles.

17 For Critical Discourse Analysis see van Dijk (2001) and Fairclough and Wodak (1997).



Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians (Πρεσβεῖα περί Χριστιανῶν) 

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(1) ἀναγκαῖον δέ μοι ἀρχομένῳ ἀπολογεῖσθαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ λόγου δεηθῆναι ὑμῶν, μέγιστοι αὐτοκράτορες, ἴσους ἡμῖν ἀκροατὰς γενέσθαι καὶ μὴ τῇ κοινῇ καὶ ἀλόγῳ φήμῃ συναπενεχθέντας προκατασχεθῆναι, ἐπιτρέψαι δὲ ὑμῶν τὸ φιλομαθὲς καὶ φιλάληθες καὶ τῷ καθ' ἡμᾶς λόγῳ. ὑμεῖς τε γὰρ οὐ πρὸς ἀγνοίας ἐξαμαρτήσετε καὶ ἡμεῖς τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀκρίτου τῶν πολλῶν φήμης ἀπολυσάμενοι παυσόμεθα πολεμούμενοι. ‘I must at the outset of my defense entreat you, illustrious emperors, to listen to me impartially; not to be carried away by the common irrational talk and prejudge the case, but to apply your desire of knowledge and love of truth to the examination of our doctrine. Thus, while you on your part will not err through ignorance, we, by disproving the charges arising out of the undiscerning rumor of the multitude, shall cease to be assailed.’ (Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians, chapter 2) In the example in (1), it is completely clear that Athenagoras begins his speech by dividing the participants in the communicative event into two groups, ὑμεῖς τε ‘you’, καὶ ἡμεῖς ‘we’, through representative speech acts. This division into you and we will be the basis of his speech. His main goal is to persuade the hearers that they can discover and reveal the truth if they remain unbiased and take decisions without prejudice. Both social and ideological groups can understand each other if they rely on truth and impartiality. This permits us to say that Athenagoras divides society into two religious groups, the Christians and the Gentiles, and that his purpose is to gain more supporters persuading them that they do not deserve any kind of blame for atheism, Thyestean feasts or Oedipodean intercourse. Thus, the fight to prove that his supporters are right has just begun. (2) ἡμεῖς δὲ ὧν νοοῦμεν καὶ πεπιστεύκαμεν ἔχομεν προφήτας μάρτυρας, οἳ πνεύματι ἐνθέῳ ἐκπεφωνήκασι καὶ περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ περὶ τῶν τοῦ θεοῦ. εἴποιτε δ' ἂν καὶ ὑμεῖς συνέσει καὶ τῇ περὶ τὸ ὄντως θεῖον εὐσεβείᾳ τοὺς ἄλλους προὔχοντες ὡς ἔστιν ἄλογον παραλιπόντας πιστεύειν τῷ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πνεύματι ὡς ὄργανα κεκινηκότι τὰ τῶν προφητῶν στόματα, προσέχειν δόξαις ἀνθρωπίναις. ‘But we have witnesses of the things we apprehend and believe, prophets, men who have foretold facts concerning God and the things of God, guided by the Spirit of God. And you too will admit, excelling all others as you do in intelligence and in piety towards the true God, that it would be irrational for us to cease to believe in the Spirit of God, who guided the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments, and to give heed to mere human opinions.’ (Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians, chapter 7) In the example in (2), personal pronouns are combined with verbs of interior mental associations into representative speech acts. Athenagoras divides the social mass into two groups, his supporters ἡμεῖς ‘we’, and his opponents ὑμεῖς ‘you’. The contrast between the two groups has the purpose of strengthening the Christians’ view

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

since, according to Athenagoras, their theological system has a solid background and everything they believe in is based on what already has been confirmed by the prophets. Athenagoras speaks in the first plural person (ἡμεῖς δὲ ὧν νοοῦµεν καὶ πεπιστεύκαµεν ἔχοµεν προφήτας µάρτυρας ‘But we have witnesses of the things we apprehend and believe, prophets’) as a leader of his supporters. Thus, through this involvement Athenagoras tries to promote their political opinion and leads the audience to certain associations about who is right and who is wrong.9 In the example in (3), Athenagoras divides the participants of the speech event into two groups (through representative speech acts): the speaker and his supporters and the hearers and their supporters. Through this division, he tries to prove that the hearers were very tolerant with other nations and people who adored animals as deities, but they were very strict as regards their decisions about the Christians. In this way, Athenagoras provides us with the necessary arguments in order to castigate the Gentiles’ point of view. (3) οἱ δὲ Aἰγύπτιοι καὶ αἰλούρους καὶ κροκοδείλους καὶ ὄφεις καὶ ἀσπίδας καὶ κύνας θεοὺς νομίζουσιν. καὶ τούτοις πᾶσιν ἐπιτρέπετε καὶ ὑμεῖς καὶ οἱ νόμοι, τὸ μὲν οὖν μηδ' ὅλως θεὸν ἡγεῖσθαι ἀσεβὲς καὶ ἀνόσιον νομίσαντες, τὸ δὲ οἷς ἕκαστος βούλεται χρῆσθαι ὡς θεοῖς ἀναγκαῖον, ἵνα τῷ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον δέει ἀπέχωνται τοῦ ἀδικεῖν. (Ν) ἡμῖν δέ, καὶ μὴ παρακρουσθῆτε ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ ἐξ ἀκοῆς, τῷ ὀνόματι ἀπεχθάνεται· οὐ γὰρ τὰ ὀνόματα μίσους ἄξια, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀδίκημα δίκης καὶ τιμωρίας. διόπερ τὸ πρᾶον ὑμῶν καὶ ἥμερον καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἅπαντα εἰρηνικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον θαυμάζοντες οἱ μὲν καθ' ἕνα ἰσονομοῦνται, αἱ δὲ πόλεις πρὸς ἀξίαν τῆς ἴσης μετέχουσι τιμῆς, καὶ ἡ σύμπασα οἰκουμένη τῇ ὑμετέρᾳ συνέσει βαθείας εἰρήνης ἀπολαύουσιν. (Ν) ‘The Egyptians reckon among their gods even cats and crocodiles and serpents and asps and dogs. And to all these both you and the laws give permission so to act, deeming, on the one hand, that to believe in no god at all is impious and wicked, and on the other, that it is necessary for each man to worship the gods he prefers, so that through fear of the deity, men may be kept from wrong-doing. (Ν) But why -for do not, like the multitude, be led astray by hearsay- is a mere name odious to you. Names are not deserving of hatred: it is the unjust act that calls for penalty and punishment. And accordingly, with admiration of your mildness and gentleness, and your peaceful and benevolent disposition towards every man, individuals live in the possession of equal rights; and the cities, according to their rank, share equal honor; and the whole empire, under your intelligent sway, enjoys profound peace. (Ν)’ (Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians, chapter 13)



Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians (Πρεσβεῖα περί Χριστιανῶν) 

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Contrast

οἱ δὲ ... τοῦ ἀδικεῖν ἡμῖν … ἀπολαύουσιν ‘The Egyptians … wrong-doing.’ ‘But why … peace.’ (Nucleus) (Nucleus) Figure 1. Contrast illustrated by example (3)

(4) Πλάτων μὲν οὖν Μίνω καὶ Ῥαδάμανθυν δικάσειν καὶ κολάσειν τοὺς πονηροὺς ἔφη,18 ἡμεῖς δὲ κἂν Μίνως τις κἂν Ῥαδάμανθυς ᾖ κἂν ὁ τούτων πατήρ, οὐδὲ τοῦτόν φαμεν διαφεύξεσθαι τὴν κρίσιν τοῦ θεοῦ. Εἶθ’ οἱ μὲν τὸν βίον τοῦτον νομίζοντες “φάγωμεν καὶ πίωμεν, αὔριον γὰρ ἀποθνῄσκομεν19” καὶ τὸν θάνατον βαθὺν ὕπνον καὶ λήθην τιθέμενοι “ὕπνος καὶ θάνατος διδυμάονε20” πιστεύονται θεοσεβεῖν· ‘Plato indeed has said that Minos and Rhadamanthus will judge and punish the wicked; but we say that, even if a man be Minos or Rhadamanthus himself, or their father, he will not escape the judgment of God. Are, then, those who consider life to be comprised in this, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”, and who regard death as a deep sleep and forgetfulness (“sleep and death, twin-brothers”), to be accounted pious?’ (Athenagoras: A plea for the Christians, chapter 12) The paraphrase of Plato’s words in (4) serves a particular rhetorical purpose. Athenagoras’ goal is to oppose Plato’s opinion and, through this contrast, to express his opinion and gain more supporters of his theological view. In the following lines, the intertextual source is integrated into Athenagoras’ speech without overt mention of the name of this source; this may happen because it comes from Homer, who constituted a basic part of several cultural studies in this period, so that the source could be easily recognized by anyone. Last but not least, it is also worth mentioning that the integration of this intertextual source serves the specific purpose of parallelizing, contrasting and accusing those who are viewed as pious. In summary, Athenagoras employs his language choices to reveal his intentionality to compare two religious groups, the Christians and the Gentiles. He accomplishes this goal by using personal pronouns, intertextual sources and the rhetorical relation

18 Plato: Gorgias, paragraphs 523c–524a. 19 Esaias: chapter 22, paragraph 13. 20 Homer: Iliad, rhapsody 16, line 672.

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of contrast in the coherence of his text. His sole desire is to have the same religious rights the supporters of other religious systems have.

2.3 Tatian: Address to the Greeks (Πρὸς Ἕλληνας) 2.3.1 Context of the speech In this speech Tatian rejects every element of the ancient Greek tradition and philosophy. Hawthorne (1964: 188) maintains that this speech could be categorized as a harangue against the Greeks. Tatian condemns anything that has any kind of relation to paganism and tries to prove that Christianity deserves more,21 and according to Karadimas (2003: 20), “the author aims at shaking the ‘blind’ belief of the Greeks in their culture but still more he may aim at strengthening the belief of his own Christian community in their own values.”

2.3.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction In his attempt to reject every element of Greek tradition and philosophy, Tatian organizes his speech in such a way as to have favorable effects on the public. He divides the audience to supporters and non-supporters. Concrete examples from the speeches are given below, accompanied by comments. (5) Οἷα γάρ ἐστιν ὑμῶν καὶ τὰ διδάγματα; τίς οὐκ ἂν χλευάσειε τὰς δημοτελεῖς ὑμῶν πανηγύρεις, αἳ προφάσει πονηρῶν ἐπιτελούμεναι δαιμόνων εἰς ἀδοξίαν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους περιτρέπουσιν; εἶδόν τινα πολλάκις, καὶ ἰδὼν ἐθαύμασα καὶ μετὰ τὸ θαυμάσαι κατεφρόνησα πῶς ἔσωθεν μέν ἐστιν ἄλλος, ἔξωθεν δὲ ὅπερ οὐκ ἔστι ψεύδεται, τὸν ἁβρυνόμενον σφόδρα καὶ παντοίως διακλώμενον καὶ τοῦτο μὲν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς μαρμαρύσσοντα, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τὼ χεῖρε λυγιζόμενον καὶ διὰ πηλίνης ὄψεως δαιμονῶντα καὶ ποτὲ μὲν ὡς Ἀφροδίτην, ποτὲ δὲ ὡς Ἀπόλλωνα γινόμενον, ἕνα κατήγορον πάντων τῶν θεῶν, δεισιδαιμονίας ἐπιτομήν, διάβολον ἡρωϊκῶν πράξεων, φόνων ὑποκριτήν, μοιχείας ὑπομνηματιστήν, θησαυρὸν μανίας, κιναίδων παιδευτήν, καταδικαζομένων ἀφορμὴν καὶ τὸν τοιοῦτον ὑπὸ πάντων ἐπαινούμενον. ἐγὼ δὲ αὐτὸν παρῃτησάμην πάντα ψευδόμενον καὶ τὴν ἀθεότητα καὶ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ὑμεῖς δὲ ὑπὸ τούτων συλαγωγεῖσθε καὶ τοὺς μὴ κοινωνοῦντας ὑμῶν ταῖς πραγματείαις λοιδορεῖτε. Κεχηνέναι πολλῶν ᾀδόντων οὐ θέλω καὶ τῷ νεύοντι καὶ κινουμένῳ παρὰ φύσιν οὐ βούλομαι συνδιατίθεσθαι.

21 For the contradiction between Christianity and other religions see Alexandropoulos (2014a), Lucas (1993), Momigliano (1963).



Tatian: Address to the Greeks (Πρὸς Ἕλληνας) 

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‘And of what sort are your teachings? Who must not treat with contempt your solemn festivals, which, being held in honor of wicked demons, cover men with infamy? I have often seen a man—and have been amazed to see, and the amazement has ended in contempt, thinking that he is one thing internally but outwardly counterfeits what he is not—giving himself excessive air of daintiness, indulging in all sorts of effeminacy; sometimes darting his eyes about; sometimes throwing his hands hither and thither and raving with his face smeared with mud; sometimes personating Aphrodite, sometimes Apollo; a solitary accuser of all the gods, an epitome of superstition, a vituperator of heroic deeds, an actor of murders, a chronicler of adultery, a storehouse of madness, a teacher of cynædi, an instigator of capital sentences;—and yet such a man is praised by all. But I have rejected all his falsehoods, his impiety, his practices, — in short, the man altogether. But you are led captive by such men, while you revile those who do not take a part in your pursuits. I have no mind to stand agape at a number of singers, nor do I desire to be affected in sympathy with a man when he is winking and gesticulating in an unnatural manner.’ (Tatian: Address to the Greeks, chapter 22) In (5) Tatian first employs a directive speech act (i.e., his questions Οἷα γάρ ἐστιν ὑμῶν καὶ τὰ διδάγματα; τίς οὐκ ἂν χλευάσειε τὰς δημοτελεῖς ὑμῶν πανηγύρεις, αἳ προφάσει πονηρῶν ἐπιτελούμεναι δαιμόνων εἰς ἀδοξίαν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους περιτρέπουσιν ‘And of what sort are your teachings? Who must not treat with contempt your solemn festivals, which, being held in honor of wicked demons, cover men with infamy?’) to motivate the audience’s thoughts. Then, he resorts to a representative speech act to provide the required information. After this answer, he separates himself from the tactics of his times through representative speech acts, and shifts the blame on his opponents as they follow persons with lack of piety (ἐγὼ δὲ αὐτὸν παρῃτησάμην πάντα ψευδόμενον καὶ τὴν ἀθεότητα καὶ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ὑμεῖς δὲ ὑπὸ τούτων συλαγωγεῖσθε καὶ τοὺς μὴ κοινωνοῦντας ὑμῶν ταῖς πραγματείαις λοιδορεῖτε ‘But I have rejected all his falsehoods, his impiety, his practices, — in short, the man altogether. But you are led captive by such men, while you revile those who do not take a part in your pursuits’). This contrast between ‘me’ and ‘you’ has a particular intentional goal to promote the speaker as a reliable character. In the example in (5), the rhetorical relation of contrast through two nuclei brings to the surface two ideological entities: two egos are compared through the personal pronouns ἐγὼ ‘I’ and ὑµεῖς ‘you’.22

22 According to Mann and Thompson (1986, 1988), contrast is a multi-nuclear rhetorical relation with no more than two nuclei. The situations presented in these two nuclei are (a) comprehended as the same in many respects, (b) comprehended as different in a few respects and (c) compared with respect to one or more of these differences.

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

Contrast

ἐγὼ … τὸ ν ἄ νθρωπον ὑµεῖς δὲ λοιδορεῖ τε ‘But I … the man altogether.’ ‘But you … pursuits.’ (Nucleus) (Nucleus) Figure 2. Contrast illustrated by example (5)

(6) Πυθαγόρας Εὔφορβος γεγονέναι φησὶ καὶ τοῦ Φερεκύδους δόγματος κληρονόμος ἐστίν ὁ δὲ Ἀριστοτέλης τῆς ψυχῆς διαβάλλει τὴν ἀθανασίαν.23 στασιώδεις δὲ ἔχοντες τῶν δογμάτων τὰς διαδοχὰς ἀσύμφωνοι πρὸς τοὺς συμφώνους ἑαυτοῖς διαμάχεσθε. σῶμά τις εἶναι λέγει τὸν τέλειον θεόν, ἐγὼ δὲ ἀσώματον ἄλυτον εἶναι τὸν κόσμον, ἐγὼ δὲ λυόμενον ἐκπύρωσιν ἀποβαίνειν κατὰ καιρούς, ἐγὼ δὲ εἰσάπαξ κριτὰς εἶναι Μίνω καὶ Ῥαδάμανθυν, ἐγὼ δὲ αὐτὸν τὸν θεόν ἀπαθανατίζεσθαι μόνην τὴν ψυχήν, ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ τὸ σὺν αὐτῇ σαρκίον. ‘Pythagoras says that he was Euphorbus, and he is the heir of the doctrine of Pherecydes; but Aristotle impugns the immortality of the soul. You who receive from your predecessors doctrines, which clash with one another, you the inharmonious, are fighting against the harmonious. One of you asserts that God is with body, but I assert that He is without body; that the world is indestructible, but I say that it is to be destroyed; that a conflagration will take place at various times, but I say that it will come to pass once for all; that Minos and Rhadamanthus are judges, but I say that God Himself is the Judge; that the soul alone is endowed with immortality, but I say that the flesh is also endowed with it.’ (Tatian: Address to the Greeks, chapter 25) In the example in (6), Tatian chooses once again to use a paraphrase; actually, he integrates the content of the intertextual source into his speech, not to give proof, but mostly to use it as a point of contrast. Actually, while he presents his arguments, he does not mention the subject of the intertextual source and uses the indefinite pronoun σῶμά τις εἶναι λέγει τὸν τέλειον θεόν ‘One of you asserts that God is with body’ as he denies this view. Then, by means of the repetition of the personal pronoun ἐ γὼ ‘I’ into representative speech acts (ἐγὼ δὲ ἀσώματον ἄλυτον εἶναι τὸν κόσμον, ἐγὼ δὲ λυόμενον· ἐκπύρωσιν ἀποβαίνειν κατὰ καιρούς, ἐγὼ δὲ εἰσάπαξ κριτὰς εἶναι Μίνω καὶ Ῥαδάμανθυν, ἐγὼ δὲ αὐτὸν τὸν θεόν ‘but I assert that He is without body; that the world is indestructible, but I say that it is to be destroyed; that a conflagration

23  Aristotle: On the soul, paragraph 430a, lines 17–25.



Tatian: Address to the Greeks (Πρὸς Ἕλληνας) 

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will take place at various times, but I say that it will come to pass once for all; that Minos and Rhadamanthus are judges, but I say that God Himself is the Judge’), Tatian exposes his opposition to the previous philosophical views and promotes himself as a character who knows very well what he says. He is the only person who knows the truth and the others fall into error. (7) πάντες οἱ βουλόμενοι φιλοσοφεῖν παρ’ ἡμῖν οἳ οὐ τὸ ὁρώμενον δοκιμάζομεν οὐδὲ τοὺς προσιόντας ἡμῖν ἀπὸ σχήματος κρίνομεν· τὸ γὰρ τῆς γνώμης ἐρρωμένον παρὰ πᾶσιν εἶναι δύνασθαι λελογίσμεθα κἂν ἀσθενεῖς ὦσι τοῖς σώμασι (S). τὰ δὲ ὑμέτερα φθόνου μεστὰ καὶ βλακείας πολλῆς (N). ‘As for those who wish to learn our philosophy, we do not test them by their looks, nor do we judge of those who come to us by their outward appearance; for we argue that there may be strength of mind in all, though they may be weak in body (S). But your proceedings are full of envy and abundant stupidity (N).’ (Tatian: Address to the Greeks, chapter 33) Antithesis

πάντες … σώµασι τὰ δὲ ὑµέτερα … πολλῆς ‘As for those … appearance;’ ‘for we argue … stupidity.’ (Satellite) (Nucleus) Figure 3. Antithesis illustrated by example (7)

In the example in (7), Tatian attacks the Gentiles and expresses his opinion about the value of their character in the nucleus of this relation of antithesis through representative speech acts.24 The antithesis between his and his supporters’ view and the character of the Gentiles aims at their negative representation.

24 According to Mann and Thompson (1987) antithesis involves the negation of X, which is contrasted with the affirmation of Y.

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

2.4 St. Justin Martyr: First and Second Apology 2.4.1 Context of the speeches Ιn these two speeches, written in the era of syncretism,25 Justin Martyr tries to defend Christianity and reveals that it is superior to both the Greek theological system and the Mosaic law.

2.4.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction In my analysis, I will focus on striking instances of contradiction in the speeches examined. (8) ἀλλ', ὡς προέφημεν, οἱ φαῦλοι δαίμονες ταῦτα ἔπραξαν (Ν) ἀπαθανατίζεσθαι δὲ ἡμεῖς μόνους δεδιδάγμεθα τοὺς ὁσίως καὶ ἐναρέτως ἐγγὺς θεῷ βιοῦντας, κολάζεσθαι δὲ τοὺς ἀδίκως καὶ μὴ μεταβάλλοντας ἐν αἰωνίῳ πυρὶ πιστεύομεν (Ν). ‘But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things (N). ‘And we have learned that those only are deified, who have lived near God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire (Ν).’ (St. Justin Martyr: First Apology, chapter 21) Contrast

ἀλλ' … ἔ πραξαν ἀπαθανατίζεσθαι … πιστεύοµεν ‘And we … deified’ ‘who … fire’ (Nucleus) (Nucleus) Figure 4. Contrast illustrated by example (8)

Ιn example (8) Justin uses the rhetorical relation of contrast: Two nuclei are compared to each other. The personal pronoun ἡμεῖς ‘we’ enables Justin to express his supporters’ view and disagree with others who have a different opinion and behave

25 According to Berlin (1980: 9) “the term syncretism is often used in anthropology and history as if it were transparent, descriptive term referring to the borrowing, affirmation, or integration of concepts, symbols or practices of one religious tradition into another by a process of selection and reconciliation”.



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in an immoral way. The evaluative adjective οἱ φαῦ λοι ‘wicked’ modifies the word δαίμονες ‘devils’; in this way Justin assesses the character of the opponents’ gods and contrasts them with his supporters’ gods. The latter are distinguished from others due to the fact that they are pious and have moral values, ἡμεῖς μόνους δεδιδάγμεθα τοὺς ὁσίως καὶ ἐναρέτως ἐγγὺς θεῷ βιοῦντας ‘And we have learned that those only are deified, who have lived near God in holiness and virtue’. (9) καὶ οἱ προγεγενημένοι τοῦ Χριστοῦ, κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον λόγῳ πειραθέντες τὰ πράγματα θεωρῆσαι καὶ ἐλέγξαι, ὡς ἀσεβεῖς καὶ περίεργοι εἰς δικαστήρια ἤχθησαν. ὁ πάντων δὲ αὐτῶν εὐτονώτερος πρὸς τοῦτο γενόμενος Σωκράτης τὰ αὐτὰ ἡμῖν ἐνεκλήθη· καὶ γὰρ ἔφασαν αὐτὸν καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρειν, καὶ οὓς ἡ πόλις νομίζει θεοὺς μὴ ἡγεῖσθαι αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ δαίμονας μὲν τοὺς φαύλους καὶ τοὺς πράξαντας ἃ ἔφασαν οἱ ποιηταί, ἐκβαλὼν τῆς πολιτείας καὶ Ὅμηρον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ποιητάς, παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐδίδαξε, πρὸς θεοῦ δὲ τοῦ ἀγνώστου αὐτοῖς διὰ λόγου ζητήσεως ἐπίγνωσιν προὐτρέπετο, εἰπών· “Τὸν δὲ πατέρα καὶ δημιουργὸν πάντων οὔθ' εὑρεῖν ·ᾴδιον, οὔθ' εὑρόντα εἰς πάντας εἰπεῖν ἀσφαλές”.26 ἃ ὁ ἡμέτερος Χριστὸς διὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως ἔπραξε. Σωκράτει μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἐπείσθη ὑπὲρ τούτου τοῦ δόγματος ἀποθνήσκειν· Χριστῷ δέ, τῷ καὶ ὑπὸ Σωκράτους ἀπὸ μέρους γνωσθέντι (λόγος γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἔστιν ὁ ἐν παντὶ ὤν, καὶ διὰ τῶν προφητῶν προειπὼν τὰ μέλλοντα γίνεσθαι καὶ δι' ἑαυτοῦ ὁμοιοπαθοῦς γενομένου καὶ διδάξαντος ταῦτα), οὐ φιλόσοφοι οὐδὲ φιλόλογοι μόνον ἐπείσθησαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειροτέχναι καὶ παντελῶς ἰδιῶται, καὶ δόξης καὶ φόβου καὶ θανάτου καταφρονήσαντες· ἐπειδὴ δύναμίς ἐστι τοῦ ἀρρήτου πατρὸς καὶ οὐχὶ ἀνθρωπείου λόγου κατασκευή. ‘Our doctrines then appear to be greater than all human teaching; because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became the whole rational being, both in body, and in reason, and in soul. For whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated it by finding and contemplating some part of the Word. But since they did not know the whole of the Word, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves. And those who by human birth were more ancient than Christ, when they attempted to consider and prove things by reason, were brought before the tribunals as impious persons and busybodies. And Socrates, who was more zealous in this direction than all of them, was accused of the very same crimes as us. For they said that he was introducing new divinities and did not consider those to be gods whom the state recognized. But he cast out from the state both Homer and the rest of the poets, and taught men to reject the wicked demons and those who did the things which the poets mentioned; and he exhorted them to become acquainted with the God who was to them unknown, by means of the investigation of reason, saying, “That it is neither easy to find the Father and Maker of all, nor, having found Him, is it safe to declare Him to all.” But these things our Christ did through His own power.

26 Plato; Timaeus, paragraph 28c.

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 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles

For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word who is in every man, and who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own person when He was made of like passions and taught these things), not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason.’ (St. Martyr Justin: Second Apology, chapter 10) The intertextual source is incorporated into the text through quotation marks, using the introducing participle εἰπών ‘saying’. In this way, the text producer assigns objectivity to his message to prove that everything he says is really true. In addition, the integrated text has one more function: it operates as a means of contrast between what Christ and Socrates say. (10) Π  λάτων δὲ ὁμοίως ἔφη Ῥαδάμανθυν καὶ Μίνω κολάσειν τοὺς ἀδίκους παρ' αὐτοὺς ἐλθόντας· ἡμεῖς δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ πρᾶγμά φαμεν γενήσεσθαι, ἀλλ' ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς σώμασι μετὰ τῶν ψυχῶν γινομένων καὶ αἰωνίαν κόλασιν κολασθησομένων, ἀλλ' οὐχὶ χιλιονταετῆ περίοδον, ὡς ἐκεῖνος ἔφη, μόνον. ‘And  Plato, in like manner, used to say that  Rhadamanthus  and  Minos  would punish the wicked who came before them; and we say that the same thing will be done, but by the hand of Christ and upon the wicked in the same bodies united again to their spirits, which are now to undergo everlasting punishment; and not only, as Plato said, for a period of a thousand years.’ (St. Justin Martyr: First Apology, chapter 8) In this last example, Justin utilizes the personal pronoun to once again separate his supporters from his opponents; he speaks as a leader of his supporters and expresses his basic antithesis with what Plato says. Furthermore, we note that he uses the demonstrative pronoun ἐκεῖνος instead of quoting again the name of Plato. In this way, Justin tries to achieve an ideological division, reject Plato’s thought and promote himself and his supporters view.

2.5 St. Gregory Nazianzen: First and Second Invective against Julian the Emperor 2.5.1 Context of the speeches Gregory Nazianzen composed these speeches between 362 and 363 AD in response to the Emperor’s rejection of the Christian faith. Historically, Julian the Emperor is considered a strong supporter of paganism. As Cantor (1993: 59) states:



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Julian is generally known as Julian the apostate. Like his uncle Constantine, he also experienced a conversion, but in the opposite direction – from Christianity to Paganism. While Julian had been brought up in the Christian religion, he had acquired a taste for Roman literature and Greek philosophy, and he finally abandoned the Christian religion for that monotheistic kind of paganism already described. As long as his cousin, Constantine’s son, was on the throne, he kept his apostasy from the Christian religion to himself, but after his accession to the throne, he openly made a profession of paganism.

Furthermore, he remarks that paganism found its warmest defenders among the ranks of the Roman aristocracy and the Italian and the Greek academic world. In the Roman Senate and in the civil service the pagans remained strongly entrenched until the last two decades of the century. During the fourth century, pagan piety in the upper classes became more elevated, more ardent, and more mystical. Under the influence of Stoicism and Neoplatonism, many of the aristocratic pagans developed a kind of monotheism and abandoned their old lax morality for a more ardent and stern code of ethics that was reminiscent of the Roman aristocracy in the best days of the Republic. (Cantor, 1993: 59)

As McGuckin (2001: 121–130) claims these invectives speeches assert that Christianity will overcome imperfect rulers, such as Julian, through love and patience. […] This process, as described by Gregory, is the public manifestation of the process of deification (theosis), which leads to a spiritual elevation and mystical union with God. Julian resolved, in the late 362 AD, to vigorously prosecute Gregory and his other Christian critics; however, the Emperor perished the following year during a campaign against the Persians. […] With the death of the Emperor, Gregory and the Eastern churches were no longer under the threat of persecution, as the new Emperor, Jovian, was an avowed Christian and supporter of the church.

2.5.2 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction I will now present and discuss a number of concrete and clear-cut examples. (11) Δεύτερον δὲ, εἰ δόξης ἐπιθυμίᾳ κινδυνεύειν ἡμᾶς, ἀλλὰ μὴ τῆς ἀληθείας, ὑπέλαβε· ταῦτα μὲν παιζέτωσαν παρ᾿ ἐκείνοις Ἐμπεδοκλεῖς, καὶ Ἀρισταῖοι, καὶ Ἐμπεδότιμοί τινες, καὶ Τροφώνιοι, καὶ τοιούτων δυστυχῶν ἀριθμός· ὧν ὁ μὲν τοῖς Σικελικοῖς κρατῆρσιν ἑαυτὸν θεώσας, ὡς ᾤετο, καὶ εἰς τὴν κρείττονα λῆξιν ἀφ᾿ ἡμῶν ἀναπέμψας, τῷ φιλτάτῳ σανδάλῳ κατεμηνύθη παρὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐκβρασθέντι· καὶ οὐ θεὸς ἐδείχθη μετ᾿ ἄνθρωπον, ἀλλ᾿ ἄνθρωπος κενόδοξος, καὶ ἀφιλόσοφος μετὰ θάνατον, καὶ οὐδὲ τὰ κοινὰ συνετός· οἱ δὲ ἀδύτοις τισὶν ἑαυτοὺς ἐγκρύψαντες ὑπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς νόσου καὶ φιλαυτίας, εἶτ᾿ ἐλεγχθέντες, οὐ μᾶλλον ἐκ τῆς κλοπῆς ἐτιμήθησαν ἢ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ λαθεῖν καθυβρίσθησαν. Χριστιανοῖς δὲ ἥδιον ὑπὲρ εὐσεβείας τὸ πάσχειν, κἂν πάντας λανθάνωσιν, ἢ ἄλλοις τὸ εὐδοξεῖν μετὰ τῆς ἀσεβείας…

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‘In the second place, if he imagined that we braved danger out of love of glory, and not of the Truth, let the Empedocles amongst those people play at such a game, and their Aristacuses, and their Empedotimuses, and their Trophoniuses, and a lot more of such unlucky folks  of whom the one, after making a God of himself, as he fancied, by means of the Sicilian crater, and sent himself up to a better termination of existence, was betrayed by that dear little sandal, vomited by the fire, and was proclaimed not a god amongst men, but a man of vanity, no philosopher, nay, not even possessed of common intelligence; whilst those who out of the same itch and ambition buried themselves in certain inaccessible caves, and were afterwards detected, did not reap so much honor from the deception as they did disgrace from the discovery. It is sweeter to Christians to suffer for religion’s sake, even though they may be unknown to all men, than it is to others to enjoy glory combined with impiety…’ (Gregory Nazianzen: First Invective Against Julian the Emperor, chapters 59-60) In this part of his speech, St. Gregory utilizes the strategy of positive and negative face, making a comparison between the Greeks and the Christians. He presents the way that Greeks think and behave in their lives and utilizes the mechanism of comparative reference through the comparative degree of the adjective ἥ διον ‘sweeter’.27 This adjective aids him to present the value of Christian life in such a way as to persuade the audience to adopt the Christian way of thinking as a way of life. The in-group of Christians is represented in a positive way, whereas the out-group of the Gentiles is represented in a negative way. The same happens in the example in (12). (12) Πρῶτον μὲν, ἀδελφοὶ, πανηγυρίσωμεν, μὴ φαιδρότητι σώματος, μηδὲ ἐσθῆτος ἐξαλλαγαῖς καὶ πολυτελείαις, μηδὲ κώμοις καὶ μέθαις, ὧν κοίτας καὶ ἀσελγείας τὸν καρπὸν ἐμάθετε· μηδὲ ἄνθεσι στέψωμεν ἀγυιὰς, μηδὲ μύρων αἰσχύναις τραπέζας, μηδὲ πρόθυρα καλλωπίσωμεν· μὴ τῷ αἰσθητῷ φωτὶ καταλαμπέσθωσαν αἱ οἰκίαι, μηδὲ συναυλίαις καὶ κρότοις περιηχείσθωσαν· οὗτος μὲν γὰρ Ἑλληνικῆς ἱερομηνίας ὁ νόμος· ἡμεῖς δὲ μὴ τούτοις τὸν Θεὸν γεραίρωμεν, μηδὲ τὸν παρόντα καιρὸν ἐπαίρωμεν, οἷς οὐκ ἄξιον, ἀλλὰ ψυχῆς καθαρότητι, καὶ διανοίας φαιδρότητι, καὶ λύχνοις τοῖς ὅλον τὸ σῶμα φωτίζουσι τῆς Ἐκκλησίας, θείοις λέγω θεωρήμασι καὶ νοήμασιν, ἐπί τε τὴν ἱερὰν λυχνίαν ἐγειρομένοις, καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην καταλάμπουσι. ‘First, therefore, brethren, let us keep a festival, not with cheerfulness of face, nor changes and sumptuousness of apparel, nor with revellings and drunkenness, the fruit whereof ye have been taught is chambering and wanton-ness; neither let us crown the streets with flowers, nor our tables with the scandal of perfumes, nor let us decorate the entrances of our dwellings; neither let our houses be

27 For more details about comparative reference see Halliday and Hasan (1976).



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illuminated with the material light, nor resounding with concerts and the clapping of hands - for this is the pride of a heathen festivity. But let not us glorify God, or celebrate the present occasion with such things as these, wherewith it is not fitting----but rather with purity of soul and cheerfulness of temper, and with the lamps of the Church that illuminate the body, I mean with godly contemplations, add thoughts raised aloft upon the Sacred Lamp-stand, and diffusing a light over all the world I Compared to such a Light, I esteem as a mere trifle all that men light up when they hold festival.’ (Gregory Nazianzen: Second Invective Against Julian the Emperor, chapter 35) In this example St. Gregory compares the Greeks to the Christians and advises them on what to do in their practical and public life. The lexical choice of ‘we’ is also the practice of group categorization that is so ideological. The word ‘we’ represents the in-group members, the Christians, whereas the demonstrative pronoun οὗ τος ‘this’ contributes to the negative representation of the out-group members, the Gentiles. (13) Εὐηθέστατε, καὶ ἀσεβέστατε, καὶ ἀπαιδευτότατε τὰ μεγάλα! σὺ κατὰ τοσούτου κλήρου καὶ τῆς οἰκουμενικῆς καρποφορίας, τῆς πάντα διαλαβούσης τὰ πέρατα, διὰ τῆς εὐτελείας τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς μωρίας, ὡς ἂν αὐτοὶ φαίητε, τοῦ κηρύγματος, ὃ σοφοὺς ἐνίκησε, καὶ δαίμονας ἔπαυσε, καὶ χρόνον ὑπερηκόντισε, τὸ αὐτὸ παλαιόν τε ὁμοῦ τυγχάνον καὶ νέον, ὡς ὑμεῖς τῶν θεῶν τινα τερατεύεσθε… ‘O thou most foolish, and impious, and ignorant in great matters! dost thou dare this against the great inheritance and the whole world’s harvest, that passes over all limits by means of the simplicity of the Word and the folly, as ye will call it, of the preaching, the which has overcome the wise, and put an end to devils, and has shot over Time, being at once ancient and new, in the same way as ye make a special wonder of one of your own gods.’ (Gregory Nazianzen: First Invective Against Julian the Emperor, chapter 67) (14) Π  όθεν οὖν ἐπῆλθέ σοι τοῦτο, ὦ κουφότατε πάντων καὶ ἀπληστότατε, τὸ λόγων ἀποστερῆσαι Χριστιανούς; ‘How did it come into thy head, thou silliest and greediest of mortals, to deprive the Christians of words?’ (Gregory Nazianzen: First Invective Against Julian the Emperor, chapter 101) In examples (13) and (14), the superlative degree of the adjectives provides an evaluative character to these vocatives, as they evaluate the political opponent with a dose of irony, thus contributing to a negative presentation of Julian the Emperor. The Saint censures Julian for the furious persecution initiated against the great heritage of Christ, which will not cease to exist, no matter how fiercely the enemies of the faith fight it at times. In this way, St. Gregory attacks Julian and, by giving emphasis on the

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negative attitude of the opponent, he leads the audience to make correlations about him and his Christian supporters. (15) Παῦσόν σου τὰς γοητικὰς καὶ μαντικὰς βίβλους· αἱ προφητικαὶ δὲ καὶ ἀποστολικαὶ μόναι ἀνελιττέσθωσαν. Ἐπίσχες σου τὰς αἰσχρὰς καὶ σκότους γεμούσας νύκτας· ἀντεγερῶ τὰς ἱερὰς ἐγὼ καὶ λαμπρὰς παννυχίδας. Φρᾶξον τὰ ἄδυτά σου καὶ τὰς εἰς ᾅδου φερούσας ὁδούς· ἐγὼ τὰς φανερὰς καὶ φερούσας πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἐξηγήσομαι. ‘Destroy thy books of jugglery and divination, let only those of the Prophets and Apostles be opened; put a stop to thy infamous rites, so full of darkness; I will raise up against them our sacred vigils of the Light; stop up thy sanctuaries and the roads leading unto hell; I will show thee the open road and that leads to heaven!’ (Gregory Nazianzen: Second Invective Against Julian the Emperor, chapter 31) In the example in (15), St. Gregory utilizes directive speech acts to present Julian the Emperor acting in a particular way. In addition, the imperative mood of the verbs he uses helps us to understand the psychological mood of St. Gregory. St. Gregory is irritated with Julian the Emperor and he utilizes verbs in imperative mood, prompting him not to follow the same policy. The directive speech acts in this example have as a purpose to direct Julian towards other choices, while expressing the opposition of the speaker, in this case of St. Gregory, to the actions of Julian hitherto. Therefore, the speaker initially directs and subsequently commits to the restoration of order with commissive speech acts, ἀντεγερῶ τὰς ἱερὰς ἐγὼ καὶ λαμπρὰς παννυχίδας. Φρᾶξον τὰ ἄδυτά σου καὶ τὰς εἰς ᾅδου φερούσας ὁδούς· ἐγὼ τὰς φανερὰς καὶ φερούσας πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἐξηγήσομαι ‘I will raise up against them our sacred vigils of the Light … I will show thee the open road and that leads to heaven’, and indirectly contributes to his positive self-representation, since he himself is the only who knows the proper route to be followed henceforth.

2.6 Conclusion This study, the originality of which is limited to the fact that it results in the attempt to approach the texts of Byzantine letters in linguistic terms, has aimed at analyzing the stylistic choices of four orators connected to their historical and social environment.28 These particular orators express the Christian faith and display their antithesis toward the ideology of the Gentiles in different ways, influenced as much by their personal viewpoints as by the atmosphere surrounding them. The struggle between

28 For similar studies see Alexandropoulos (2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b).

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the Christians and Gentiles lasted about four centuries (second to fourth century AD). As Florovsky (1974: 25) remarks “[w]hat is important in this case is that the Ancient Culture proved to be plastic enough to admit of an inner ‘transfiguration’. Or, in other words, Christians proved that it was possible to reorient the cultural process, without lapsing into a pre-cultural state, to re-shape the cultural fabric in a new spirit. The same process which has been variously described as a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ can be construed rather as a ‘Christianization of Hellenism’. Hellenism was, as it were, dissected by the Sword of the Spirit, was polarized and divided, and a ‘Christian Hellenism’ was created. Of course, ‘Hellenism’ was ambiguous and, as it were, double-faced. And certain of the Hellenistic revivals in the history of the European thought and life have been rather pagan revivals, calling for caution and strictures. It is enough to mention the ambiguities of the Renaissance, and in later times just Goethe or Nietzsche. But it would be unfair to ignore the existence of another Hellenism, already initiated in the Age of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, and creatively continued through the Middle Ages and the Modern times. What is really decisive in this connection is that ‘Hellenism’ has been really changed. One can be too quick in discovering ‘Hellenic accretions’ in the fabric of Christian life, and at the same time quite negligent and oblivious of the facts of this ‘transfiguration’.

During these four centuries, the relationship between the two religious groups, Christians and Gentiles, went through different phases,29 which are also visible in the stylistic choice of the orators. In particular, Athenagoras and Justin maintain an exploratory stance. Athenagoras makes no reference to the bible, but seeks to find similarities and grant equivalent privileges. For this reason he is not pugnacious. This also applies to Justin, who sought similarities between the two theological systems while still promoting the superiority of Christianity. The unspoken comparison also applies to Athenagoras and Justin with representative speech acts, rhetorical relations of contrast and antithesis which aim to describe the two theological systems and their collation. In contrast, Tatian, even though he lived around the same period (i.e., around the time of the beginning of the theological reformation of the Christians and the Gentiles), became sarcastic, quarrelsome and aggressive, and was motivated by racial prejudice (he was a Barbarian). According to Jaeger (1962: 123) “[b]ut obviously his hatred of everything Greek went deeper than that and had racial reasons”. Tatian rejects Greek thought and from his stylistic choices (be they the rhetorical relations of contrast and antithesis or intertextuality) he promotes the reduction of his rivals and the elevation of himself and his supporters. Gregory acts in the same manner. Even though he loves Greek education and considers it a superior virtue, feeling oppressed by the unjust measures imposed by Julian the Emperor against the Christians which forbade them from receiving a Greek education, Gregory proceeds, after the death of the Emperor, to an aggressive attack. He forms a rhetoric that elevates Christianity

29 For more details about the relationship between Christians and Gentiles see Dodds (1995).

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as a superior theological system and uses stylistic choices like irony, intertextuality, superlatives and directive speech acts in a way that reveals his delight at the triumph of Christianity. Overall, the fluctuations in the relationships of the representatives of the two systems are reflected in their stylistic choices, either as an attempt at finding common ground or, other times, at making points of superiority. Finally, it has been established that, as the years passed and Christianity established itself through the work of Christian orators, the mechanisms of contradiction became more intense. The qualitative analysis and the descriptive data from these four Christian writers against the Greeks help us reach a better understanding of the mechanisms that express contradiction. The orators resort to the comparison of the religious systems of the Christians and the Gentiles, while expressing contradiction through linguistic mechanisms such as personal and demonstrative pronouns, coherence relations (contrast, antithesis), comparative reference, adversary conjunction, evaluative vocatives, speech acts, irony and intertextual sources. Through contradiction, they attempt to give emphasis on their opponents’ negative characteristics and to promote their own ideology. van Dijk (2003, 2005) identifies these strategies as self-representation and emphasizes the negative character of other representations. In this way, Christian writers organize the textual structure of their speeches so as to have favorable effects on the public, either to manipulate it or to prove that their ideas are correct and to try to gain and maintain power.30 I showed that Christians are represented in a positive way, whereas the group of the Gentiles is represented in a negative one. The reason for this choice by the Christian writers is to dominate the audience and strengthen their ideology gaining more supporters. Their ideology leads them to try to manipulate people’s mind and reproduce hegemony and dominance. The communicative function of contradiction allows us to understand how the Christian writers reproduce hegemony and dominance. The social and political structure has an impact on their style in their attempt to persuade, gain more supporters, influence the social interaction and ensure the cohesion of their groups. They try to divide the audience into supporters and non-supporters of their beliefs through the interplay of their ideology with their stylistic and discursive practice, since, according to Hodge and Kress (1993: 6) language is “an instrument of control as well as communication”.

References Alexandropoulos, Georgios. 2013a. Κείμενο και περικείμενο στους πολιτικούς λόγους του Φλαβίου Κλαυδίου Ιουλιανού: συνεκτικότητα, διακειμενικότητα και επικοινωνιακός στόχος (Text and

30 For more details about the ‘power’ see Hutchby (1996) and Foucault (1977).

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McGuckin, John A. 2001. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. An intellectual biography. New York: Crestwood. Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1963. The conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the fourth century. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Mukarovsky, Jan. 1964. Standard Language and Poetic Language. In Paul L. Garvin (ed. and trans.), A Prague School reader on esthetics, literary structure, and style, 17–30. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press. Oktar, Lütfiye. 2001. The ideological organization of representational processes in the presentation of us and them. Discourse & Society 12 (3). 313–346. Olson, Roger 1999. The story of Christian theology. Twenty centuries of tradition and reform. Chicago: Intervarsity Press. Plato. 1925. Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias. Translated by W. R. M. Lamb. Loeb Classical Library. Plato. 1929. Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles. Translated by R. G. Bury. Loeb Classical Library. Rankin, David. 2009. Athenagoras: Philosopher and theologian. London: Ashgate. Riviere, Jean. 1907. S. Justin et les Apologistes du II’ Siecle. Paris: Bloud et Cie. Roberts, Alexander & James Donaldson. 1867. Ante-Nicene Christian library. Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A. D. 325. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. 1979. Expression and meaning. Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. 1994. How performatives work. In Robert M. Harnish (ed.), Basic topics in the philosophy of language, 75–95. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Searle, John R. 1996a. What is a speech act? In Aloysius P. Martinich (ed.), The philosophy of language, 130–140. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle, John R. 1996b. Indirect speech acts. In Aloysius P. Martinich (ed.), The philosophy of language, 168–182. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Semisch, Carl G. 1840/1842. Justin der Märtyrer. Eine kirchen- und dogmengeschichtliche Monographie, 1. T/2. T. Breslau: Nabu Press. St. Gregory of Nazianzus.1913. First and second invective speech against Julian. Edited by Charles Herbermann. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Tatian.1913. Address to the Greeks. Edited by Charles Herbermann. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Young, Frances. 1999. Greek apologists of the second century. In Martin Goodman, Mark J. Edwards & Christopher Rowland (eds.), Apologetics in the Roman Empire. Pagans, Jews and Christians, 81–129. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre

3 A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence: Evidence from the Stonor Letters31 It is now widely assumed that sociolinguistic research over the last decades has developed in three waves: a first wave of quantitative studies analysing variability in connection to the demographic categories of class, age, gender and ethnic background; a second wave of social and ethnographic-based approaches drawing on participantdesigned categories to analyse individual linguistic identity in the micro-context of social units, like social networks; and a third wave of anthropologically oriented studies that aim at reconstructing the social meaning of linguistic variables within layered communities, not only sharing a ‘dialect’, but also a common background, similar aspirations, mentalities and world-views that inform the construction of both indiviual and group identities (Eckert, 2012). The historical sociolinguistic paradigm has clearly developed within the first and second waves, with studies drawing connections between linguistic data from the past and the classical variables of class, age, gender (first wave) and social network (second wave), thus enriching our comprehension of historically attested changes (Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg, 1996; 2003; Conde-Silvestre, 2007; Hernández-Campoy and CondeSilvestre, 2012). Historically oriented approaches within the third wave are, at the moment, scarce, possibly due to difficulties in reconstructing groups and, especially, identities and social meanings within past societies (see, however, Kopaczyk and Jucker, 2013). I believe that the evidence afforded by some collections of early English correspondence, like the fifteenth-century Stonor Letters, may favour this process of reconstruction, thus making a third-wave sociolinguistic approach to linguistic materials from the past feasible. Keywords: historical sociolinguistics; style; community of practice; Middle English; Stonor Letters.

31 Financial support for this research has been crucially provided by the DGICT of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2014-56084-P) and by the Fundación Séneca (19331-PHCS-14), the Murcian Agency for Science and Technology (Programas de Apoyo a la Investigación). © 2016 J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.



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3.1 ‘Communities of practice’ and the third-wave approach in historical sociolinguistics It is now widely assumed that sociolinguistic research over the last decades has developed in three waves: a first wave of quantitative studies analysing variability in connection to the demographic categories of class, age, gender and ethnic background; a second wave of social and ethnographic-based approaches drawing on participantdesigned categories to study individual linguistic identity in the micro-context of social units, like social networks; and a third wave of anthropologically oriented studies that aim at reconstructing the social meaning of linguistic variables within layered communities, not only sharing a ‘dialect’, but also a common background, similar aspirations, mentalities and world-views that inform the construction of both indiviual and group identities (Eckert, 2012). As such, this third-wave approach highlights both the local contexts where variation assumes its social meaning – “concrete places, people, styles and issues” (Eckert, 2000: 4) – and the groups mutually engaged in the construction of such meaning, to the point that this becomes “[not just] a mere reflection of membership [...] but [is] related to the practices that [...] make membership in them meaningful” (Eckert, 2000: 3; see also Millar, 2012: 5–10). The third wave approach has developed a theory of variation as practice complementary to the view of variation as structure prevalent in the first and second waves (Eckert, 2000: 2). Linguistic variation in this context is not something given; it is not the reflection of pre-established social meanings, but attaches to categories indirectly, by way of the practices and ideologies constituting them. Thus, variation contributes to the construction of social practices and ideologies, together with other “indexical systems” like gestures, clothing, paraphernalia, food consumption, etc (Eckert, 2012; see also Meyerhoff, 2002: 526–548). This implies that “the meaning of individual variables is underspecified and takes in specificity in the context of discourse and in the construction of speech styles” (Eckert, 2012). In the search for social meaning and identity construction, this approach has often resorted to ‘communities of practice’ as a basic analytical construct (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).32 A ‘community of practice’, in connection to the study of language, is defined as follows:

32 Sociolinguists and discourse analysts distinguish the ‘community of practice’, which is often created with a specific goal and whose members tend to be aware of belonging to it, from other forms of interaction also pertinent to linguistic practices like ‘discourse communities’ and ‘text communities’. Members of the former are usually engaged in a common enterprise, especially in “shaping and reshaping linguistic practices” (Jucker and Kopaczyk, 2013: 5). The latter is a broader construct, involving any group of literate people sharing a particular range of written texts, their members not being “bound together by common practices and goals, but [...] by texts which refer to [them], address [them] and are used by [them]” (2013: 5; see also Swales, 1990: 21–32).

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[A]n aggregate of people who come together around some enterprise. United by this common enterprise, people come to develop and share ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values —in short, practices— as a function of their joint engagement in activity. Simultaneously, social relations form around activities and activities form around relationships [...] [A] ‘community of practice’ is simultaneously defined by its membership and the shared practice in which that membership engages. The value of the construct ‘community of practice’ is in the focus it affords on the mutually constitutive nature of individual, group, activity and meaning (Eckert, 2000: 35; see also Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992: 464).

A ‘community of practice’ involves three specific dimensions: (i) the mutual engagement of its members in common practices; (ii) the pursuit of a joint enterprise in which the members are involved; and (iii) a shared repertoire of resources, or ways of doing things, whether linguistic –language routines, styles – or not: gestures, tools, concepts, artifacts, a common behaviour, a common background etc. (Wenger, 1998: 72–73; see also Jucker and Kopaczyk, 2013: 6–7). The interplay of these elements is clearly summarised by Hanna Rutkowska: Mutual engagement arises through participation in the community whose members set up norms and develop collaborative relationships. These relationships bind members of a community of practice and make it a social entity. Then, they build up a joint enterprise, achieving a shared understanding through their interaction. The joint enterprise can be called the ‘domain’ of the community of practice and is subject to (re)negotiation among its members. Eventually, the community generates a shared repertoire of resources as part of their practice, including experiences, tools, solutions to recurring problems (Rutkowska, 2013: 125).

The relevance of the interactive factor makes communities of practice the ideal locus to study the social meaning of linguistic variables in specific contexts and situations, in so far as it is in the daily participation of individuals in their communities when “linguistic resources [are used] for local stylistic purposes”, thus enabling the social life of variation (Eckert, 2000: 1–2). According to Eckert: “[i]t is in the process whereby an individual negotiates with his/her communities of practice that linguistic style is constructed and refined and patterns of variation are imbued with meaning” (Eckert, 2000: 172). The historical sociolinguistic paradigm has clearly developed within the first and second waves, with studies drawing connections between linguistic data from the past and the traditional (essentialist) variables of class, age, gender (first wave) and social network (second wave), thus enriching our comprehension of historically attested changes (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 1996; 2003; Conde-Silvestre, 2007; Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre, 2012). Historically oriented approaches within the third wave are, at the moment, scarce, due to obvious difficulties in reconstructing groups and, especially, identities and social meanings of past societies. This does not mean – in view of the ‘uniformitarian principle’, i.e., the idea that languages varied in the same patterned ways in the past as they have been observed to do today (Labov, 1994: 21-25) – that language users in



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the past did not mutually engage in common enterprises which required a shared repertoire of resources, including linguistic variables that, in the process, were given social meanings. In fact, communities of practice have been successfuly applied to interpret a number of linguistic issues connected to specific groupings from the past: (i) correspondents mutually engaged in some joint enterprise (Cruickshank, 2013; Dossena, 2013; Dylewski, 2013; Włodarczyk, 2013); (ii) scribes, printers and (later) publishers engaged in the common undertaking of producing manuscripts or books and exchanging or sharing resources with this aim (Rogos, 2013; Rutkowska, 2013; Tyrkkö, 2013; Sairio, 2013); (iii) any other network whose members were bound together by a common professional aim, such as monks at monastic houses in AngloSaxon England (Timofeeva, 2013), members of the legal profession, like clerks and notaries in medieval and early modern Scotland (Kopaczyk, 2013), or physicians and surgeons, as affiliates of the medical profession, in Early Modern England (Hebda and Fabiszak, 2013). A privileged period has been the eighteenth century, with studies on communities of grammarians participating in debates on the nature, sources and significance of their work (Buschmann-Göbels, 2008; Watts, 2008;), scholars and writers sharing the project of a periodical publication, like The Spectator in 1710-1714 (Fitzmaurice, 2010), or scientists exchanging ideas and aims within the Royal Society (Gotti, 2013). My contribution belongs within this new trend in historical sociolinguistics. It is an attempt to reconstruct a late medieval community of practice based on the evidence afforded by the extant documents and letters addressed to members of the Stonor family of Oxfordshire in the mid-fifteenth century. I will particularly draw on some of the letters exchanged by knights and other gentry that shared the common enterprise of enfeoffment or collaborated in the performance of services to the community. I will also pay attention to some of the stylistic traits that these documents share, with a view to highlighting some social meanings in the patterns of variation they exhibit.

3.2 Identity in the late English Middle Ages and in the Stonor Letters For obvious reasons, the reconstruction of identity in the Middle Ages is not an easy task. Identity is basically a contextual, relational issue, involving the connections an individual could have established with other men and women – parents, siblings, neighbours – as well as with and within public entities – the Church, and so on. All these relational patterns created an individual’s “mode of being in the world” (Rubin, 2006: 383). It goes without saying that the absence of first-hand information often makes this enterprise mere wishful thinking, impossible to materialise. The reconstruction of identity is, however, more likely when the individual dimension is transcended and research focuses on the community level, searching for the “shared aims and [...] alliances” medieval people made “around specific aims and tasks” (Rubin, 2006:

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403). Medieval identity is easier to trace the higher up the social scale. In the context of the English Middle Ages, clues are often obtained for the nobility and gentry, and especially for knights (Morgan, 1986; Noble, 2009; Radulescu and Truelove, 2005). Reconstruction, in this case, is mainly based on the preservation of ego-documents, like letters, wills, legal texts or even funerary inscriptions. Additionally, it is also possible to rely on contemporary treatises describing, with educational purposes, the ideal behaviour of the higher echelons of medieval society, or just aiming at ruling out the chances for other members of the realm to reach this rank.33 The reconstruction of identity for the late medieval English gentry, and particularly for knights, is based on the following distinctive aspects: (a) L  and and lineage. In the late Middle Ages, land was not only a source of livelihood and revenues, but also a symbol of status and power, so that families, and especially first-born males, had the obligation to retain and manage their landed estates and transfer them to future generations, thus ensuring that the gentry status was maintained (Campbell, 2006: 222–223; Noble, 2009: 68–69). Continuity and maintenance of status from gentle ancestors – “the uninterrupted possession of an estate inland, a patrimony organized around a hall” (James, 1974: 182) – also forms the essence of lineage (Noble, 2009: 40–41) which was reflected in symbols, like heraldic arms.34 Lineage was also preserved through wills or genealogies and exhibited in rites of passage, like christenings, marriages and funerals (Noble, 2009: 194). (b) Service and office holding. A well-known dimension of gentry identity was the exchange of services for protection. The world of the medieval (English) gentry was necessarily built around the two poles of clientage, “to bolster [...] power”, and patronage, “for advancement and protection” (Closs, 2006: 43). Members of the gentry effected lordship in their manors, and clientage with other lords, and this exchange of loyalty for service and viceversa is often defined as the basic relationship binding medieval society together. Additional dimensions were the performance of public services and the use of a language of deference. In the late Middle Ages the gentry often performed public services for the community, participating in royal commissions, becoming members of Parliament or holding local offices, such as sheriff and justice of the peace (Closs, 2006: 42). Patronage

33 See, for instance, John Russell’s Book of Nurture (c. 1460-70), Sir John Fortescue’s The Governance of England (c. 1471), or Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son (mid 15th century), in addition to the Sumptuary Laws of 1363, which attempted to define fashions, styles and norms of behaviour for each social group. 34 “Through heraldry, individuals and families expressed their identity, their pride in their lineage, their sense of association with other chivalric families and their sense of separateness from the nonarmigerous” (Closs, 2006: 38).



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and clientage, service and loyalty, reflect a society highly conscious of hierarchy, and this was expressed in the language of deference used by members of the gentle class. Respectful and courteous use of language and, particularly, of specific forms of address, as reflected in fifteenth-century collections of letters, like the Stonors’, allows us “to glimpse a consciousness of status” (Closs, 2006: 73), which is also characteristic of gentry identity. Manifestations of deference could also be expected in speech and in body language, but, for obvious reasons, these are difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct. (c) Consuming habits in daily life. These were also means of marking identity and status, especially in the later Middle Ages, “when the usual economic conditioning following the demographic devastation of the Black Death stimulated higher per capita expenditure [...] on a growing diversity of goods and services” (Kowaleski, 2006: 239; see also Noble, 2009: 97). These habits range from food consumption and clothing, which differentiated the identity of the gentry from other ranks, to domestic issues: forms of architecture, internal house decoration, the use of distinct implements and utensils such as furniture, or tableware, and even the possession of books. One complete collection of documents from the English gentry is The Stonor Letters and Papers (Carpenter ed., 1996), which contains texts from 1290 to 1483 related to ten generations of the family established at the manor of Stonor, in Oxfordshire, since the early reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The family reached knighthood in the mid-fourteenth century when Sir John de Stonor (1281–1354) was appointed to the rank (1324). The materials, which were first collected and edited by Charles Kingsford in 1919 for the Royal Historical Society, are diverse and include grants, wills, legal documents, as well as letters both in French and English. Elizabeth Noble, in her monograph The World of the Stonors. A Gentry Society (2009), has already approached these documents with a view to identifying the networks and types of relationships enacted in them, and especially “the connections made with significant others, particularly those who figure in the legal transactions associated with marriage, land and other property [...] [but also on] other ‘networks’ or connections [...] with people who were not necessarily country gentry, such as tenants, lawyers, clerics and merchants of the Staple” (2009: 10). Noble aims at depicting not only the familial and regional worlds of the Stonors, but also “the mental and communicative aspects of these worlds by focusing on parameters and their cultural capital, communicated to them and by them through their social and mental contacts” (2009: 11). I believe that this is parallel to a third-wave sociolinguistic analysis, particularly when she considers “the Stonors with an emphasis on communication” and highlights “the vocabulary, ideas and symbols that were circulating throughout the network” (2009: 160).

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From the evidence in The Stonor Letters and Papers, different patterns of relationships can be reconstructed involving the family members with people from various social ranks and circles: lords, kin, office holders and servants. Social historians have noticed some fluidity in the bonds among all these strata, often moulded on the basis of a general feeling of mutuality that stands out when compared to status and social rank per se. In fact, these relations have been compared to a “brotherhood in arms” going beyond the expected ties of lordship or servitude (Noble, 2009: 184; see also Keen, 1962). In the words of Elizabeth Noble: “the Stonor correspondents reveal a shared value in their emphasis on trust in relationships. The processes between people that establish networks, norms and social trust and that help them cooperate for mutual benefit provide a social glue that has elsewhere been dubbed not cultural, but social capital” (Noble, 2009: 191).35 It seems, therefore, that mutual trustworthiness could be one of the social meanings (or cultural capitals) enacted in the Stonor correspondence. Moreover, this collection is useful for the historical sociolinguist, who can trace the behaviour of individuals that engaged together with some common aim and, with this purpose, shared a repertoire of resources, including the exchange of letters itself. In short, communities of practice can be reconstructed and their linguistic products can be stylistically analysed in connection with this social meaning.

3.3 Oxfordshire cofeoffees and civil servants: a fifteenth-century community of practice in the Stonor letters At least one community of practice can be reconstructed from the written documents in the Stonor collection.36 This network belongs to the time of Thomas Stonor II (22

35 The didactic poem by Peter Idley, Instructions to his Son (c. 1474) is acknowledged as one of the ‘intellectual’ sources behind the medieval concept of trustworthiness in mutual relationships. Idley compiled this pedagogical poem from different sources, including some sections of Robert Manning’s Handlyng Synne (early 14th century) and John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (1431–1438) as well as homiletic precepts and pieces of moral advice; however, they were filtered “from within a mentality that reflects gentry culture as he knew it” (Noble, 2009: 162). He was a neighbour and distant relative of the Stonors, which also makes of this treatise an emblematic epitome of the identity of the family and their circle, and of the social meanings that they all represented. 36 Elizabeth Noble highlights evidence in the Stonor letters of another network of gentlemen collaborating in a community of interests during the last third of the fourteenth century. The members of this group were united by “holding similar county offices, but also some affinity in their relationship to the honour of Wallingford and by their being linked by military service to the Black Prince” (Noble, 2009: 157). This network of local gentry operated spatially over the territory of the Thames valley (in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire), rather than in a single country, and it offered its members the mutual benefits of neighbouring lordship in their everyday life. Unfortunately, no individual letters by any member of this group have survived to analyse the linguistic counterpart of their affinity.

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March 1424 –23 April 1474). The first son of Thomas Stonor I, he was seven when his father died and was under the guardianship of Thomas Chaucer (the poet’s son) until 1434. From then until his majority in 1445, his states were in the hands of John Warfield, Humphrey Forster and, later, Henry Doggett. By 1450, he married a natural daughter of William de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk: a certain Jane or Joan, probably born in Normandy, who is attested to have received letters of denisation in May 1453. After taking possession of his states, he led the conventional life of the country gentry, whose identity traits – described above – he epitomised: he focused “on his own and local affairs” (Noble, 2009: 32), both by managing the family’s landed states and by performing services to the community. He represented Oxfordshire in the Parliaments of 1446–1447 and 1449–1450 and was knight sheriff of Oxford and Berkshire in 1453– 1454 and again in 1465–1466. He did not participate, however, in any commission during the late years of Henry VI’s reign, but partook in three during the Lancastrian Restoration from October 1470. He was also appointed a commissioner of array for Oxfordshire in April 1471 and in March 1472, and was a member of ten comissions of peace continuously between 1468 and 1474 (Carpenter ed., 1996: 50–52).37 Although he was the addressee of the majority of letters from this period, only three letters include his signature: (i) a petition to Edward IV concerning a grant of one hundred marks (No. 78, 1465), (ii) a letter to his wife informing her of the death of his mother Alice Stonor and her second husband, Richard Drayton (No. 91, 1468), and (iii) a brief letter asking his son William for a provision of arrows (No. 97, 1468/1469?). In the course of such a conventional lifetime, Thomas Stonor had extensive contacts with a great number of people, but a very specific type of relationship was enacted with some of his correspondents and with some individuals mentioned in the letters. This relationship was based on enfeoffment. Originally, in the feudal system, this applied to any grant of land by the lord in exchange for a pledge of service. By the mid-fifteenth century, however, it had developed into a more specific type of legal action, often known as enfeoffment to use: “the act by landholders of entrusting their lands to a group of trustees for a period of time, who would reconvey them later to whoever was designated, the original holder or his heirs. This practice was often performed to secure landed property during the minority of a heir [...] avoiding the prerogatives of the king over all other lords to wardship during the heir’s minority” (Noble, 2009: 44; see also Saul, 1986: 24, 92; Rigby, 1995: 265; Dyer, 1997: 173). The aim of enfeoffment to use, as it was put into practice in the Stonors’ circle, was to ensure

37 A Yorkist ‘newsletter’ with a description of the second battle of St. Albans (1461) has been preserved among the Stonor papers, but it is doubtful whether it sustains a clear allegiance of Thomas Stonor to one side or another in the political affairs of the period. Elizabeth Noble describes his behaviour as also typical of a good part of the gentry, “eschewing involvement in the Wars of the Roses [...] especially at times of upheavals in the 1450s and 1460s” (2009: 32), even if he was on friendly terms with the Archbishop of York, George Neville (1432–1476), and became his protégé (see also Carpenter ed., 1996: 32).

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that landholders gained more freedom in the disposition of their lands, usually after their death, by circumventing the traditional privileges of lords in a higher position, including the crown. This alliance could involve members of the gentry holding a similar office, but also servants and receivers, and it was established on the basis of mutual service and trustworthiness: “acting together when necessary” and “shar[ing] an adherence to the value associated with the importance of land and the duties involved in being a feoffee or executor” (Noble, 2009: 159). I believe that a late medieval group of people interconnected in this way can be characterised as a community of practice, with the three dimensions defined above: (i) the mutual engagement in the act of protecting and ensuring the adequate transmission of enfeoffed land, which was also (ii) the joint enterprise in which they all had mutual interest and for which purpose they performed mutual services, and (iii) a repertoire of resources, including the letters that they exchanged, and especially those addressed to Thomas Stonor II which, fortunately, have been preserved. Some individuals mentioned in the Stonor collection participated in this common enterprise from as early as 1442–1443 – when Thomas Stonor was in his twenties – by acting together as feofees for the manor of Dodyngton, in Buckinghamshire.38 In addition to Thomas Stonor II, they were Thomas Ramsey I, Peter Fettisplace, Richard Restwold, John and Edmund Hampden, John’s son Thomas Hampden, Richard Drayton and Humphrey Forster. The mutual relationship between these people was to last beyond these early years, either as kin, neighbours or in the performance of mutual services, including additional actions of enfeoffment. The network also extended during Thomas’s lifetime to John Wroughton II, John Botiller, William Beckingham, John Lydyard, Richard Bedford, Henry Doggett and Thomas Mull. These are the brief biographical profiles of the members of this community of practice (Noble, 2009: 169–179, 186–187). –– The Hampden family had close connections with the Stonors since the time of Thomas I, who was stepbrother of John Hampden and Sir Edmund Hampden. Both brothers held offices in Buckighamshire, and Sir Edmund also became knight, sheriff and escheator in Oxfordshire. They were also at the service of the earl of Suffolk and of Duke William de la Pole, whose natural daughter married Thomas Stonor II. John’s son, Thomas Hampden, was a contemporary of Thomas II and, in addition to being cofeoffees for Dodyngton in the early 1440s, they shared similar offices, like sheriff and justice of Buckinghamshire in the 1460s. He was later appointed executor of Thomas Stonor’s will. Only one letter survives in the collection, recommending the services of a gentleman (No. 75, c. 1465).

38 According to Elizabeth Noble, “[t]his enfeoffment encapsulates the network within which the young Thomas Stonor grew up, one of kinship combined with local gentry support” (Noble, 2009: 171).

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By way of the Hampden family, the Stonors were also connected to the Wroughtons. John Wroughton I was a Wiltshire man, who married Isabel Hampden (c. 1424), sister of John and Edmund. Thomas Stonor II named him as executor and, later, his son, John Wroughton II (d. 1496) became Thomas’s feoffee. John II was also executor and feoffee of Thomas Hampden, which implies that close links existed between all of them. Unfortunately no letters from this period have survived. Family connections were also behind the relationship between the Stonors and the Ramseys. Thomas Ramsey I was married to Elizabeth, Thomas Stonor I’s daughter, which means that Thomas Ramsey II – one of their offspring – was Thomas Stonor II’s nephew. Both uncle and nephew performed a number of services together: (i) as executors and witnesses for two land transactions in Buckingamshire in 1460 and, together with Thomas Hampden, in 1462; and (ii) as grantees of distracted lands in 1465. Moreover, Ramsey was a feofee of the manor of Rotherfield Peppard when it was conveyed to Thomas Stonor II by his stepfather Richard Drayton (see below). Unfortunately, no letters exchanged by these two men in the period have survived. An important member of the Stonor circle was Richard Drayton. He was an Oxfordshire landowner and a well-known public figure in the county, where he served as escheator (in 1433–1434 and 1437–1438), justice of the peace, knight of the shire and feofee or witness in a number of local transactions. He was cofeoffee with Thomas Stonor II for Dodyngton manor in the 1440s, and later became second husband to Alice Stonor, Thomas I’s widow. Richard Drayton and Thomas Stonor II held a close relationship in the early 1460s, when they had to take legal measures together to protect the Stonors’ posessions at Ermington manor.39 No letters by him have survived in the collection. Thomas Stonor II and Thomas Roke also held a close relationship. The latter married one of Richard Drayton and Alice’s daughters, and his mother was also

39 In the early 1460s, the Stonors experienced some problems with their property at Ermington manor, in Devonshire. Their continuous absence from this manor – where they were not residents – could have “encourage[d] neighbours to encroach on their states” (Noble, 2009: 118). Richard Fortescue was one of these neighbours, who intimidated the Stonors’ tenants and their bailiffs, John Yerre and John Frende. The latter, in a series of letters written in 1462–1463 (Nos. 63, 64, 71) informed Thomas II of the problems. Other members of the local gentry and some of the feofees participating in this community of practice showed their support and solidarity to the family, including, in addition to Richard Drayton and John Wroughton, John Botiller, Richard Bedford, William Beckingham, John Lydyard and the Stonors’ receiver Henry Doggett. George Neville, the Archbishop of York, also became protector of the family in this issue, as attested in a document addressed to him by the bailiff John Frende in 1466 (No. 80). In a petition to the Chancery – whose draft is included in the collection (No. 82, 1466–1468) – Thomas Stonor II stated that Richard Fortescue “had unlawfully occupied Stonor lands, pastured beasts, stolen fuelled wood and generally sued and vexed any person who supported Stonor” (Noble, 2009: 118). The case eventually reached the king’s bench, where the jury found against Fortescue and the procedure was settled.

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sister of Thomas Sackville, the second husband of Thomas Stonor II’s sister Isabel. Thomas Roke was a well-known public figure in Buckinghamshire, where he often acted as escheator, sheriff, justice, feoffee and witness on several occasions. One letter exchanged with Thomas Stonor II is preserved in the collection (No. 89, from 1467). Richard Restwold, Drew Barantyne, Peter Fettisplace and Humphrey Forster were all members of the local gentry and often exchanged services with each other and with Thomas Stonor II. In fact, they all acted together as feoffees of Dodyngton manor in 1442–1443. No letters or documents by Drew Barantyne or Peter Fettisplace have survived and only one letter (No. 102) by Richard Restwold (d. 1475) has come down to us: he was from Lee and Sonning in Berkshire and became sheriff of the county twice, where he also acted as feofee for the Duke of Suffolk. The relationship between Humphrey Forster and Thomas Stonor II is better recorded: a gentleman with lands at Harpsden, in South Oxfordshire, he had been a feofee of the states inherited by Thomas Stonor II during his minority. Later he became his brother-in-law. He is also recorded as commissioner and justice for Berkshire. Two letters addressed to Thomas II have survived, number 87 (1466) and number 115 (1471).40 Two other knights were affiliated to this community of practice. Sir Richard Harcourt participated in the enfeoffment of Dodyngton manor, and later, in the 1460s, shared with Thomas Stonor II the function of shire knight in Oxfordshire (No. 110, 1470?). Sir Edward Langford also shared with Thomas II the office of knight sheriff in Berkshire during the same period, and was clearly engaged with him in a joint enterprise (No. 119, 1472).41 Richard Quartermains was not directly connected to Thomas Stonor II and the rest of cofeoffees in the early times of Dodyngton, however they developed a

40 Thomas Stonor II’s brothers-in-law were, in addition to Forster, William Harleston, a retainer of the Duke of Suffolk who held lands and performed services in East Anglia (No. 135, c. 1474), Thomas Sackville, Hugh Lewis, John Cottesmore and the anonymous H.S. (Nos. 98 and 99, c. 1469). They are not recorded as having perfomed mutual services of enfeoffment with him and therefore, despite the existence of a family relationship, are not considered members of this community of practice. The same criterion informs the exclusion of other correspondents like Thomas Hampton of Kimble, another member of the local gentry, whose conection with Thomas Stonor II did not involve the performance of joint services beyond mere neighbourhood relations. In fact, the letters exchanged with the latter were written on behalf of a Mistress Sweete, asking for some documents necessary for her pleading in a case of inheritance (Nos. 65, 66, 76, between 1462 and 1465). 41 Thomas Gate, however, is excluded. He held offices as escheator in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire before 1467, by the time Sir Thomas Stonor II was knight sheriff at Oxford and Berkshire. Despite the existence of additional connections through the Ramsey family and performing similar functions at their respective local offices, they never shared a joint enterprise. In fact, in the only letter by him preserved in the collection (No. 130, before 1474), Gate asks Thomas II to “heal a breach that had arisen between him and the Ramseys” – a mere family matter (Noble, 2009: 177).

Oxfordshire cofeoffees and civil servants: a fifteenth-century community of practice...  

––

 57

relationship involving mutual (often legal) enterprises, based on trustworthiness. He was an Oxfordshire landholder, with a state in Rycote, to the north of Stonor. In 1458 Thomas II has witnessed a transaction which involved the granting of land to the Archbishop of York, George Neville. The existence of close connections between Richard and the Archbishop was important for the Stonors, who found support from Neville during the troublesome affairs at Ermyngton manor (see footnote 39). Two letters by him survive from this period: number 94 (1467–1468?) and number 116 (1473?). The first one, addressed to both Thomas Stonor and Humphrey Forster, points to their shared participation in a commission at Oxford, thus reinforcing their links within the network. The last member of this community is Thomas Mull. He was a gentleman from Gloucestershire who married one of Richard Drayton and Alice Stonor’s daughters, so he became a member of the family and, as such, was in very close terms with Thomas Stonor II (whom he often addressed as ‘brother’). He was also a feofee and executor of Drayton. He soon moved to Kent, where he performed legal and commercial services for Thomas II, often in London: “purchasing plate and sheep [...] dealing with matters to do with the kentish manor of Clyve” (Noble, 2009: 173–174). Six letters by him are preserved, some dealing with family matters – number 100 (1469) and number 111 (1470?) – or discussing a possible match for a relative – Nos. 121 (1472), 123 (1472) and 124 (1472) – and one related to the affairs at Ermyngton manor (No. 69, 1463).

All members of this network were mutually engaged through their participation in actions of enfeoffment and the performance of services to the community. The success of these pursuits depended on the existence of a mutual feeling of trustworthiness. This has already been identified as one oustanding social meaning (or capital) that members of this community of practice enhanced through their interaction and, as such, it must have been present in the resources that they exchanged. Unfortunately, only some of the letters exchanged by a limited number of these individuals have survived. Other means, linguistic and non-linguistic, of expressing their mutual enterprises – like gestures, tools, artifacts – cannot be accessed. In the following section, I will undertake the linguistic analysis of these letters with the aim of extracting common patterns of variation, which could correlate with the social meanings constructed through the interaction of their authors in the mutual performance of enfeoffment and communal public services. The corpus consists of fifteen letters addressed by eight different correspondents from this community to Thomas Stonor II between 1463 and 1472, with a total of 5511 words (Table 1).

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 A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence

Table 1. Letters by members of the community of practice in the Stonor collection (1463-1472) Author

No.

Date

Thomas Mull Thomas Hampden Humphrey Forster Thomas Rokes Richard Quatermains Thomas Mull Richard Restwold Richard Harcourt Thomas Mull Humphrey Forster Richard Quatermains Sir Edward Langford Thomas Mull

69 75 87 89 94 100 102 110 111 115 116 119 121 123 124

1463 c. 1465 1466 1467 1467/68 1469 before 1470 1470? 1470? 1471 1471 1472 1472 1472 1472

Total

Word count 240 299 369 319 270 355 99 329 570 291 281 247 505 792 545 5511

3.4 Linguistic analysis 3.4.1 Letter writing and code choice A resource shared by most members of this community of practice is the act of letter writing itself. It is true that not all the letters written by them have survived, and that the extant correspondence has only one addressee, Sir Thomas Stonor II. However, these individuals are all mentioned in the letters surviving from this period, which sanctions their common enterprise and the existence of shared practices. Indeed, Elizabeth Noble has highlighted the role of literacy among the Stonors “as a tool for running their estates and communicating about it and other matters” (2009: 197). Another resource shared by this community is code choice. All the letters preserved were written in English which, by the early fifteenth century was the common written code in England, after centuries of coexistence with French and Latin. The correspondents probably had no choice at the time but to use their native language in private documents, but it is true that French and Latin were still working languages in the country, as attested in other documents from the same collection: “A warrant for collection of King’s silver” (No. 77, c. 1465), mixing up English and Latin, “A Petition by Thomas Stonor to Edward IV” (No. 78, 1465), also in English and Latin with profusion of French legalese, or “Proceedings in the suit of Stonor vs Fortescue” (No. 82, 1466– 1468) in Latin. This was also the language used in the writs and petitions addressed to Sir Thomas Stonor when he acted as sheriff (No. 84, 1466, No. 85, 1466) and in the list of fees entered as number 117 (1471). The use of English in personal letters was already common, but this does not preclude that this be highlighted against the



Linguistic analysis 

 59

background of other documents from the same period for which Latin was still the expected language.

3.4.2 Keyness and n-gram analysis Recurrent key topics and shared forms of address also characterise the texts issued by members of this community of practice. With the aim of detecting some common patterns, our corpus (Table 1) has been subject to two procedures well-established in corpus linguistics: keyness and n-gram (lexical bundle) analysis. In the first case, word lists have been produced for each individual letter written by the members of the group and for the complete corpus, and these have been compared to a much larger collection of correspondence: the late Middle English section in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence – henceforth CEEC – (Nevalainen et al., 2006),42 with a total of 366,226 words, distributed in 865 documents covering the fifteenth century (from 1418 to 1529). N-gram (or lexical bundle) analysis is based on the automatic retrieval of strings of n-words repeated any number of times in the texts. This facilitates the identification of phrases or recurrent collocations. Key words have been extracted by means of Wordsmith 6.0 tools (http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/) while the Online NGram Analyzer has been used for the second test (available at http://guidetodatamining.com/ ngramAnalyzer). The results of positive keyness (i.e., the outstanding key words in the source corpus in contrast with the average found in the CEEC) are displayed in Table 2, while some of the more relevant n-gram collocations appear in Table 3. One outstanding item in Table 2 is ‘cousin’, with the different spelling variants cosen (11 occurrences / 0.18%), cossyn (5 occurrences / 0.08%), cossyne (4 occurrences / 0.07%) and cosyn (16 occurrences / 0.26%). All variants show high rates of positive keyness, ranging from 87.67 in the case of cosen to 38.50 for cosyn, with cossyn and cossyne showing 41.49 and 39.87 respectively. Comparison with the CEEC evinces that ‘cousin’ – especially the variant cosyn – was a frequent term of address in the letters exchanged by members of the gentry throughout the fifteenth century, with 283 occurrences and 0.3% frequency. In contrast, the rates of positive keyness in the texts by members of this network are very high, which makes of this item an emblematic option. From the biographical sketches above, we can infer that some of the correspondents – like Thomas Hampden or Thomas Mull – could claim legitimate ‘cousinship’ with Sir Thomas Stonor, but this is doubtful for others, whose connections with the latter were based on the common actions performed either as cofeoffees and coofficers. Richard Restwold, for instance, addressed Sir Thomas as his

42 Namely The Cely Letters, Original Letters Illustrative of English History I, The Paston Letters, Plumpton Correspondence, Rerum Brittanicarum Mediaevi Scriptores and The Letters and Papers of John Shillingford.

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 A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence

“right worshipful cousin” (No. 102); this term of address does not imply the existence of a family relationship between the two, whose ties were restricted to the exercise of common actions of enfeoffment. The same applies to Richard Quartermains, who signed one letter addressed to both Sir Thomas and Humphrey Forster as “your cosyn” (No. 94), while no evidence of a family relationship with either of them exists. In a sense, it seems that cosyn and its variants were not always used to express kinship, but often applied to relationships based on mutual close friendship: a relationship of trustworthiness which, in the case of this community of practice, could be extended to the shared enterprise of enfeoffment and/or mutual services performed by its members. The lexical bundle analysis (Table 3) indicates that cosyn collocates with the adjective worshipfull. This is another key word in the list (see Table 2), with 16 occurrences, 0.26% frequency and a rate of 49.49, in contrast to 0.02% frequency in the CEEC. The bigram “worshipfull cosyn” shows three occurrences in the corpus (Table 3) with a log-likelihood of 24.94. The variant cosen also collocates with the possessive my: a bigram with 7 occurrences and a log-likelihood of 41.91. The trigram involving the intensifier right– “right worshipfull cosyn” – is also common (3 occurrences), just as the expected 5-gram “my right worshipfull Cosyn Thomas” (2 occurrences). Table 2. Keywords and positive keyness in the letters by the community of practice (compared to the late ME section of CEEC) Keyword

Frequency and % in Frequency and % in source corpus (Stonor) reference corpus CEEC

Keyness

cosen joyntur plesyr servaunt worshipfull mastres preserve love cossyn cossyne ric cosyn syr God goode conceyve toll unkyndnes disposicion pore cope lande

11 / 0.18% 7 / 0.11% 7 / 0.11% 10 / 0.16% 16 / 0.26% 11 / 0.18% 11 / 0.18% 10 / 0.16% 5 / 0.08% 4 / 0.07% 4 / 0.07% 16 / 0.26% 23 / 0.38% 27 / 0.44% 12 / 0.20% 6 / 0.10% 3 / 0.05% 3 / 0.05% 6 / 0.10% 8 / 0.13% 4 / 0.07% 4 / 0.07%

87.67 60.28 60.28 60.25 49.49 49.26 42.95 42.24 41.49 39.87 39.87 38.59 35.74 35.35 32.68 32.52 29.90 29.90 28.14 27.78 27.58 27.58

6 2 2 22 191 / 0.02 % 60 83 63 2 0 0 283 / 0.03% 687 / 0.08% 947 / 0.11% 177 / 0.02% 19 0 0 29 77 5 5



Linguistic analysis 

 61

Table 3. Most significant n-grams in the letters by the community of practice Key word

n-grams

count

Log likelihood

‘cousin’

my cosen

7

41.919648607486

worshipfull Cosyn

3

24.945228606131

my right worshipfull Cosyn Thomas right worshipfull Cosyn my right worshipfull

2 3 3

0.032916392363397 0.049374588545095 0.049374588545095

hertes plesyr

3

42.124665991868

to your plesyr

3

0.049374588545095

your hertes plesyr

3

0.049374588545095

to your hertes plesyr

2

0.032916392363397

Jhesu preserve

3

27.352977105957

preserve you and

5

0.082290980908492

which preserve you

2

0.032916392363397

Jhesu preserve you

3

0.049374588545095

Jhesu preserve you and

2

0.032916392363397

toll

your toll never

2

0.032916392363397

God

sowle God

3

32.848446282151

God assoyle

3

32.848446282151

whos sowle God assoyle

2

0.032916392363397

cope

the cope of all

2

0.032916392363397

pore

pore man

4

38.785625607958

worshipfull

plesyr

preserve

Positive keyness is also outstanding for the lexical items joyntur (with 7 occurrences, 0.11% frequency and a rate of 60.28) and ric (with 4 occurrences, 0.07% frequency and a rate of 39.87). Both are legal terms derived from the common enterprise of enfeoffment that socially glued this community of practice. The Middle English Dictionary (Kurath, Kuhn and Lewis [1952–2001]) – henceforth MED – defines jointūr(e as “(a) [t]he holding of an estate by two or more persons jointly [...]; (b) an estate held by two or more persons jointly [...]; (c) the holding of an office jointly with someone else” (s.v.). These definitions clearly reflect the relationships enacted within the group, whether they were based on acting together as feoffees for one state or as sharing a common office in the county. Ric is also used in this context as a general legal term designing “(a) [s]overeignity, dominion, authority [...]; (b) the territory over which authority extends” (MED s.v. rīche). The second sense denotes the joint enterprise shared by the group.

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Both words clearly function as topic markers in these texts.43 This function could also be attributed to lande (4 occurrences, 0.07% frequency and a rate of 27.58) in so far as this was the relevant domain of enfeoffment. Servaunt is another key word related to topic (10 occurrences, 0.16% frequency and a rate of 60.25); as such, it only appears in a letter sent to Sir Thomas Stonor II by Edward Langford (No. 119) on account of some debts due to a servant of him, and in another letter by Richard Harcourt (No. 110) where reference is made to the errands of his servant John Cottismore in London. Toll, with a keyness rate of 29.90 (3 occurrences, 0.05% freequency) is used in one letter by Thomas Mull (No. 111) describing some payments due by Sir Thomas’s stepfather Richard Drayton. N-gram analysis (Table 3) also shows interesting dimensions of some key topic markers. For instance, the item God (35.35, 27 occurrences and 0.44% frequency in contrast to 0.11% in CEEC, according to Table 2) appears three times in the bigrams “sowle God” and “God assoyle” and twice in collocation with both sowle and assoyle in the 4-gram “whos sowle God assoyle”. As such, this is a formulaic expression for the recent death of some individual: Humphrey Forster used it to refer to his brother (No. 87) and Thomas Mull when telling Sir Thomas of some events related to the recent death of Richard Drayton and Alice Stonor (No. 111). Keyness of the lexical item plesyr (60.28, with 7 occurrences / 0.11% freequency) is also high. This French noun is often used in formulaic expressions, showing agreement with and a positive disposition towards the addressee. It was often combined, as the lexical bundle analysis shows (Table 3), in a bigram with hertes (3 occurrences, log-likelihood of 42.12), and in the trigram “to your plesyr” (3 occurrrences) or the 4-gram, “to your hertes plesyr” (2 occurrences). Another formulaic item with high positive keyness is the verb preserve (with 11 occurrences / 0.18% frequency and a rate of 42.95, see Table 2). Its appearance in bigrams and trigrams (Table 3) with the subject form Jhesu (“Jhesu preserve you and”) makes of it a recurrent formula characteristically used by members of the group in their salutations. In this context, also outstanding is the positive keyness of other forms of address such as syr (27 occurrences, 0.38% frequency in contrast to 0.08% in CEEC, and a rate of 35.74) and love (10 occurrences, 0.16% frequency, 42.24 rate). While the latter clearly signals the affections common to the members of this community as a likely counterpart to their mutual trustworthiness, the former is also expected in private correspondence of the period (with 687 occurrences in CEEC); its high rate of keyness in the Stonor letters can obviously be related to the fact that many correspondents shared the state

43 Ffyn is a related legal term, only found in the letter by Thomas Hampden (No. 75), where it shows a high rate of positive keyness when compared to the CEEC (63.07, with 5 occurrences, 0.31%). In MED, fīn is defined as “[a] final agreement or settlement in a court of law, especially one relating to the alienation of property or property rights; also, the legal process by which lands given or sold could be vested finally in a buyer, heir, feoffee, etc., especially in cases where ordinary modes of conveyance would be impracticable or less efficacious” (s.v.).

Conclusion 

 63

of knighthood and that all letters were addressed to Sir Thomas Stonor. In this same vein, the keyness of mastres (49.26, with 11 occurrences, 0.18% frequency) must be read in the context of the letters where the word appears: these are documents issued by Thomas Mull, who, despite being a family member and performing mutual services with the rest, was not a member of the gentry and, according to his rank, shows the expected deference when addressing superiors or talking about them. Finally, it is worth mentioning the high rate of keyness of two Romance loanwords: conceyve (Berry) WPI Margaret Paston female ( thing b. baðian > bathe c. bæð > bath The use of the modern digraph had already been attested in the Anglo-Saxon period, particularly in the spelling of vernacular names in Latin texts (Benskin 1982: 19), but it was reintroduced through Latin influence on Anglo-Norman scribes in the

61 They were indistinctively used in OE for the voiced and voiceless dental fricative consonants [θ] and [ð]. Despite some graphotactic conditioning in the early texts preserved, was used wordinitially and word-medially (Stenroos, 2004, 2006: 12).



Evidence from the Paston family 

 127

twelfth century. In fact, the Latin spelling was the normal way of transliterating the of Ancient Greek loan-words: (2) a. θύμον > thymum > thyme b. βιβλιοθήκη > bibliotheca > library As seen in Conde-Silvestre and Hernández-Campoy (2013), the presence of the digraph in both Latin and Biblical texts certainly acted as an influential external prestigious norm that triggered the actuation of this orthographic change, whose spread can thus be understood as a historical change from above. As such, the innovative Roman-based spelling became popular during the fourteenth century (Blake, 1992: 10). Table 11. Results of the th-spelling in the female Pastons periods

1435-1445 1446-1455 1456-1465 1466-1475 1476-1485 1486-1495 Total

variant Informants and scores

þ th þ

Agnes Paston

Margaret Paston

Elizabeth Paston

Margery Paston

Scores in Letters

Scores in Letters

Scores in Letters

Scores in Letters

19%(15/79) 81%(81/79) 33%(117/354)

54%(155/288) 46%(133/288) 53%(1006/1908) -

-

th

67%(237/354)

47%(902/1908)

-

-

þ th þ th

45%(31/69) 55%(38/69) -

19%(806/4142) 81%(3336/4142) 27%(651/2428) 73% (1777/2428)

22%(10/46) 78%(36/46) 62%(88/141) 38%(53/141)

-

þ th þ th þ th

33%(163/502) 67%(339/502)

53%(88/166) 47%(78/166) 30%(2706/8932) 70%(6226/8932)

52%(98/187) 48%(89/187)

23%(38/165) 77%(127/165) 52%(77/148) 48%(71/148) 37%(115/313) 63%(198/313)

In our study on the extension of the spelling to the detriment of in the Paston family during the fifteenth century, for methodological homogeneity reasons, the same 13 informants were used, yielding an amount of 26,454 occurrences of this orthographic variable. Like Bergs’ (2005), the orthographic analysis focused on letters exclusively. Table 11 shows the results of the scores for the conservative þ and innovating th spellings in the preserved documents ‘written’ by the female members of the Paston family (Agnes, Margaret, Elizabeth and Margery) classified according Bergs’ (2005) age cohorts.

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 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research

Figure 8. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Agnes Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span

Figure 9. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margaret Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span



Evidence from the Paston family 

 129

Figure 10. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Elizabeth Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span

Figure 11. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span

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 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research

As Figures 8-11 show, unlike the patterns of maturational as well as generational or communal changes obtained by Bergs (2005) for his grammatical variables studied, in the case of this orthographic variable the longitudinal examination of the sociolinguistic behavior exhibited by each female informant’s life span is absolutely chaotic and inconsistent, without any kind of developmental linearity or tendency, neither positive nor negative. Assuming that their letters were written by scribes, whose influence would just affect graphological variables, this fact confirms that the letters of the female members of the family were written in dictation, and that there were different amanuenses doing it for them. Table 12. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery’s letters Letters

Period

Age when written

Variant

Scores % (#)

Letter 1: 1477

1476-85

22

þ

55% (16/29)

th

45% (13/29)

þ

50% (17/34)

th

50% (17/34)

þ

5% (2/43)

th

95% (41/43)

þ

5% (3/59)

th

95% (56/59)

þ

4% (1/25)

th

96% (24/25)

þ

62% (76/123)

th

38% (47/123)

þ

37% (115/313)

th

63% (198/313)

Letter 2: 1477

Letter 3: 1481

Letter 4: 1481

Letter 5: 1486

Letter 6: 1489

Total

1476-85

1476-85

1476-85

1486-95

1486-95

22

26

26

31

34

The individual analysis of Margery’s letters allowed us to find a chaotic pattern of behavior at a micro-level of interaction (Table 12 and Figure 12), where the results reflect another unpredictable pattern with disordered variation. Her six letters were written when she was between 22 and 34 years old and were all addressed to the same person (her husband: John Paston III). This means that there was no possibility for language production distinctions or choice due to addressees’ differences in terms of audience design (Bell 1984) or any other stylistic resources (see Hernández-Campoy, 2016). Similarly, the short 12-year span between her first (1477, when she was 22) and last letter preserved (1489, when she was 34), fully coinciding with her period of maturity, cannot extend any kind of analysis to the level of chronolectal variation and



Evidence from the Paston family 

 131

hence does not allow us to trace any tendencies and propensities in terms of a agegrading, for example. The absolutely inconsistent production of both orthographic variants (þ and th) in the six letters by Margery would confirm that her letters were not written by herself, but rather by different scribes, whose influence is clearly reflected in the spelling practices. The apparently illogical frequencies obtained for this variable suggest that there were, at least, three different amanuenses involved: the scribe for letters 1-2 (between 45%-50% use of the innovative variant þ) must have been different from that of letters 3-5 (between 95%-96% use of the innovative variant þ) and, in turn, to that of letter 6 (38% use of the innovative variant þ).

Figure 12. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms per letter

Table 13 summarizes the results for both the grammatical and orthographic variables and allows us to compare language production practices in the thirteen members of the Paston family examined (both males and females). Male Paston members of the family are more innovative than the female ones, as can be seen in Figure 8. Males (72% and 79%) averagely exhibit higher frequencies of usage of the new forms than females (53% and 69%), except for the new use of the relative pronoun with inanimate antecedents, whose leaders of the change are females (84% versus 75%: see Figure 9). Also, the communal change to IN-which as a new linguistic practice spread appears to be in a more advanced stage of development than those of the novel forms for th-spelling and th-pronouns, respectively, with their own innovators, fast adopters, and lames (see Figure 13).

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 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research

Table 13. Comparison of results for grammatical and orthographic variables in male and female Pastons Informants Grammatical Variables (Bergs 2005) Variable: Personal Pronouns

Agnes Paston

Margaret Paston

Elizabeth Paston

Margery Paston

Subtotal Females

William Paston I

Variable: Relative Pronoun

Total

Variable: Thorn

variant

scores %(#) variant

scores %(#)

variant scores %(#)

H-Prons

67% (14/219)

0% (0/17) 37% (14/38)

þ

33% (163/502)

TH-Prons

33% (7/21) Inanimate 100% which (17/17)

63% (24/38)

th

67% (339/502)

H-Prons

55% (234/426)

Animate which

þ 49% (248/500)

30% (2706/8932)

TH-Prons

45% (192/426)

Inanimate 81% which (60/74)

th 51% (252/500)

70% (6226/8932)

H-Prons

0% (16/16) Animate which

TH-Prons

100% (16/16)

Inanimate 86% (6/7) 96% which (22/23)

H-Prons

37% (3/8)

Animate which

TH-Prons

68% (5/8)

Inanimate 71% (5/7) 67% which (10/15)

H-Prons

53% (251/471)

Animate which

TH-Prons

47% (220/471)

Inanimate 84% which (88/105)

H-Prons

96% (22/23)

Animate which

TH-Prons

4% (1/23)

Inanimate 67% (4/6) 17% (5/29) th which

66% (116/175)

Animate which

TH-Prons

34% (59/175)

Inanimate 72% which (55/76)

H-Prons

15% (9/59) Animate which

TH-Prons

85% (50/59)

John Paston H-Prons I

William Paston II

Orthograthic Variables

Animate which

19% (14/74)

14% (1/7) 4% (1/23) þ th

29% (2/7) 33% (5/15) þ

16% (17/105)

37% (115/313) 63% (198/313) 31% (3082/9934)

th 53% (308/576)

69% (6852/9934)

þ

70% (299/430) 30% (131/430)

þ 55% (137/251)

18% (668/3645)

th 45% (114/251)

82% (2977/3645)

30% (7/23) 20% (16/82)

Inanimate 70% which (16/23)

48% (89/187)

þ 47% (268/308)

33% (2/6) 83% (24/29)

28% (21/76)

th

52% (98/187)

80% (66/82)

þ

30% (316/1038)

th

70% (722/1038)



Evidence from the Paston family 

 133

Table 13. Comparison of results for grammatical and orthographic variables in male and female Pastons continued

Informants Grammatical Variables (Bergs 2005) Variable: Personal Pronouns

Clement Paston II

scores %(#) variant

scores %(#)

H-Prons

83% (5/6)

Animate which

-

TH-Prons

17% (1/6)

Inanimate which

TH-Prons H-Prons

Subtotal Males

22% (41/189) 78% (148/189) 32% (6/19)

Variable: Thorn variant scores %(#)

83% (5/6) þ

46% (212/456)

17% (1/6) th

54% (244/456)

12% þ (47/404) 88% th (357/404) 17% (6/35) þ

25% (1258/5012) 75% (3754/5012) 36% (97/269) 64% (172/269)

Inanimate 68% which (13/19)

83% (29/35)

31% (67/213)

Animate which

29% þ (101/348)

TH-Prons

69% (146/213)

Inanimate 75% 71% th which (101/135) (247/348)

90% (4391/4897)

H-Prons

0% (0/4)

Animate which

14% (17/118)

TH-Prons

100% (4/4) Inanimate 100% (4/4) 100% (8/8) th which

86% (101/118)

H-Prons

0% (0/38)

Animate which

13% (83/655)

TH-Prons

100% (38/38)

Inanimate 64% (7/11) 92% which (45/49)

H-Prons

30% (225/749)

Animate which

TH-Prons

70% (524/749)

Inanimate 75% 72% th which (348/463) (872/1212)

John Paston H-Prons III

William Paston III

3% (6/215) Animate which 97% Inanimate (209/215) which 0% (0/16) Animate which

Total

100% (16/16)

TH-Prons

Walter Paston

Variable: Relative Pronoun

variant

John Paston H-Prons II

Edmond Paston II

Orthograthic Variables

25% (34/135)

0% (0/4)

0% (0/8)

th

þ

36% (4/11) 8% (4/49) þ th

25% 28% þ (115/463) (340/1212)

10% (506/4897)

87% (572/655) 21% (3456/16520) 79% (13064/16520)

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 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research

Figure 13. Average results for grammatical and orthographic variables in the Paston family members per gender (percentages of the innovating variants)

Figure 14. Average results for th-pronouns, Inanimate-which and th-spelling in the Paston family members per gender and variables (percentages of the innovating variants)



Evidence from the Paston family 

 135

Figure 15. Global results in the Paston family members per informants and variables (percentages of the innovating variants)

A further comparison of the language production practices for the three variables under scrutiny in those members of the family involved officially as non-autographed authors (Agnes and Margaret) or scribes of their letters (Clement II, John II, Edmond II and John III), reveals that the linguistic practices of author and scribe are much more similar in the case of the results for orthography than those for grammar (see Table 14). In grammar, the influence of the female Pastons becomes clearly visible on their scribes’ hand during dictation – they must be regarded as the authors’ and not the amanuenses’ personal language use. But quite to the contrary, in no significant case does the orthographic language production of the females run counter to their scribes’ other usage tendencies – they must be regarded as the amanuenses’ and not the authors’ personal language use. This fact would confirm, as Bergs (2005: 79) suggested, that dictation would just affect phonological or graphological variables, but not so much morpho-syntactic or lexical features. Table 14. Comparison of autograph and dictated letters (adapted from Bergs, 2005: 128, Table 38) Scribe

Author

Innovating TH-pron Innovating Inanimate-which Innovating th spelling

Clement II

Clement II Agnes John II Margaret Edmond II Margaret John III Margaret

17% 33% 97% 45% 100% 45% 69% 45%

John II Edmond II John III

100% 78% 81% 68% 81% 75% 81%

54% 67% 75% 70% 64% 70% 90% 70%

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 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research

6.5 Conclusion Scribes in late medieval England probably had a central and most important role not only for social interaction through written interpersonal communication but also for the development of the language. As Bergs (2015: 131) suggests, it might even be the case that “scribes, being experts in language and appropriate language use, may have used the language which they thought was appropriate for a certain kind of author”, representing the socio-cultural image or ideal that society held at that time regarding certain people and authors. Solving the mystery of the presence of authors’ or the scribes’ personal language use and practices in non-autographed letters can be an exercise of historical reconstruction of sociolinguistic scenarios with fragmentary data from the distant past, and always subject to the risk of anachronisms due to the possible distortion of an inadequate application of the uniformitarian principle to the speech community and also to communities of practice. As stated above, the unavailability of a full historical and socio-cultural background and therefore our unawareness of the values within a remote speech community sometimes may also detract from the social and historical validity of the investigation being carried out. With these inconveniences, authorship and gender (as a social category), therefore, constitute some of the most controversial issues when doing socio-historical research on the behaviour of linguistic forms. Especially in the case of private correspondence, letters might not have been autographs but rather possibly written by a scribe due to the widespread illiteracy characteristic of early historical time periods, which would definitely affect the representativeness of informants and thus the reliability of results from a socio-demographic perspective. For this reason, great care has to be taken in interpreting gender-based patterns of variation, especially those found in the writings of female informants, given that there is socio-historical evidence strongly suggesting that female informants did not usually write the letters themselves in those periods, but rather the family clerk, chaplain, or other scribes connected to the family. In this sense, the results obtained here by contrasting gender-based patterns in the forensic search for authorship distinction point to the confirmation of Bergs’ (2005: 79-80) hypothesis that dictation would just affect phonological or graphological variables, but not morpho-syntactic or lexical forms of the language production in epistolary documents. Yet, obviously, this is an exercise of socio-historical –and almost archaeological– reconstruction of the remote past of a given language where the inexistence of evidence does not inevitably lead to conclude the inexistence of individual facts. The data analyzed in this study suggest certain interpretations of specific patterns of sociolinguistic behavior that, given the temporal remoteness of the speech community, can only be evaluated in terms of plausibility, but always within the realm of speculation.

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Robert McColl Millar

7 Dialect death? The present state of the dialects of the Scottish fishing communities This paper discusses the attrition of traditional dialect lexis in a sample of communities associated with the fishing trade on the east coast of Scotland. Various processes are discussed, demonstrating that even when a word or phrase continues to be used it tends to have a broadened meaning which lacks the precision associated with the word or phrase even in recent resources. On occasion, this may be due to understanding of the meaning being second hand and associated with the heritage industry. These findings are placed in the context of the ongoing development of regional koines. The question is asked: are we witnessing dialect death? Keywords: Scots, attrition, dialect death, koineisation, lexical variation and change.

7.1 Introduction: the eclipse of the traditional dialect With the benefit of hindsight it is not surprising that Sociolinguistics as a field of study reached maturity at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. By this point the products of a hundred years and more of language policy and planning (whether conscious or not) in the ‘developed’ world had altered the nature of linguistic variation – in particular variation across space – considerably across the ‘developed’ world. To put it bluntly, if not exactly dead, traditional dialects were not in rude health in literate societies by 1950. It therefore made sense for scholars to focus not on geographically divergent linguistic varieties, but rather on socially divergent, largely urban ones. The causes for these developments differ from place to place but can be related to, among other things, the spread of compulsory education (where the standard variety was canonised), ease of movement and the enforcement of the norms of the middle class dominated nation state (see Millar, 2005 for further discussion). What we can say, therefore, is that, although coming from often strikingly different starting points, the languages, the standardised languages, of the metropolitan centres of Western Europe and its offshoot in North America had achieved hegemonic dominance over the language use of their respective territories in the course of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. But while this dominance was practically complete in the written sphere, other forces were at work in relation to the spoken form; at their heart was personal and perhaps particularly group identity. Local – dialectal – spoken varieties survived, continuing to be used in many places (particularly in rural regions) by a considerable proportion of the population.

© 2016 Robert McColl Millar This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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This may have been particularly the case in territories with a strong sense of regional identity. This type of preservation is strikingly present in the contemporary status of Luxembourgish (see, for instance, Berg, 1993), one of the two official languages of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In origin a western Rhine-Mosel Frankish dialect (and therefore a fairly close relative of Standard High German), the Germanic varieties of the Grand Duchy spent centuries as the Low variety in a diglossic relationship with French. This means that considerable French influence – largely unknown in similar dialects across the border in Germany – is to be found in Luxembourgish: mainly lexical, but also structural and phonological. Until the nineteenth century, Luxembourgish remained a relatively undeveloped language variety (what Kloss, 1978 termed on a number of occasions Normaldialekt), with little if any written representation. The history of the Grand Duchy in the course of that century wrought considerable shifts in language policy. The Belgian revolt against the Netherlands in 1830 and the new state’s claims to Luxembourg encouraged the use of German as a written medium; as Prussian power grew, conversely, French was used to mark distance and distinctiveness. In the latter case Luxembourgish was also used to mark off the local speech as being distinct from Standard High German; written expression certainly enhanced this position, the variety growing in visibility as the century progressed and mass education became a reality, with the local varieties being given some emphasis in at least the early years of school. Nevertheless, the language question which played out throughout the twentieth century in the country between political (and cultural) left and right was whether French or German (not Luxembourgish) should be the default written language, the latter being considered the progressive choice. It was the brutal German occupation of 1940-1944/5 which altered this situation, with Luxembourgish becoming the progressive (and also nationalist) choice. From the 1970s on genuine planning efforts were initiated to give Luxembourgish full language status, not least in the introduction of a universal orthography. In so many ways, Luxembourgish represents the antithesis of what we would expect to happen with relatively low status and only sporadically written varieties in the modern age. National and regional identity must lie at its heart. Another striking example (although in some ways more compromised, complex and of lesser extent than the Luxembourgish situation) of this counter-tendency can be found in Scotland (see, for instance, Millar, 2010). With a strong sense of its national identity often expressed in contradiction to the state of which Scotland presently forms a part, predictably, inhabitants of this country should represent their identity linguistically. With Gaelic this is straightforward, since it is not a close relative of Standard English and could never be considered a dialect of that language, even if it did not have a lengthy literary pedigree. Its comparative lack of native (or other) speakers in the modern era makes its use as a (sole) national symbol problematical even when its status has never been higher, however. The other autochthonous vernacular, Scots, has a literary heritage of similar age and quality, has many more

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speakers (around 1.5 million people out of something above five million inhabitants according to the census of 2011, the first which included a question on use and knowledge of the variety) but is a close relative of Standard English. Even in periods where moves were actively afoot by elements of the growing middle classes to extirpate (or at least sequestrate and rusticate) Scots and its dialects, as seen in the eighteenth century, use of at least words and phrases from the vernacular has been employed in even the most ‘elevated’ forms of English in Scotland to express Scottish identity (Dossena, 2005; Millar, 2012). The distinctive variety of English used in Scotland – Scottish Standard English – is a result of these cultural and national associations (Millar forthcoming). Yet even in these apparent havens of linguistic democracy and diversity, language homogenisation in favour of varieties associated with actual and symbolic power is at work. In order to understand this process, we need in the first instance to consider what happens when closely related language varieties converge; from this we will consider how regional koines – varieties which are neither local, traditional dialects or the Standard but derive their material from both while developing their own nature – come into being.

7.2 Koineisation Evidence of koineisation (see, for instance, Kerswill, 2001 and Siegel, 1985, 1987) stretches back to ancient times. Although divergence might be seen as the norm in linguistic change (and has been canonised as such in historical linguistics), convergence is certainly not uncommon and feeds into the development of language in rapidly changing, often urbanising, societies. Whenever there has been a need for an overarching linguistic variety which helps bridge differences between input varieties, processes of this type are likely to take place. Koineisation can be related to technological or political advances and alterations; it is also regularly found when migration and settlement are prevalent. A striking example of this can be found in two similar but divergent communities in western Norway. In Norway (particularly the southern half of the country) a number of isogloss bundles separate eastern from western dialects. Some of these differences are quite profound. Thus the Eastern monophthong in words like ben ‘leg; bone’ is equivalent to the diphthongal bein in the west. Western dialects tend to have a considerable degree of greater inflectional morphological complexity than do the Eastern. Thus Western skuldnarar ‘those who do wrong to us’ marks noun plurality in a ‘richer’ way than does Eastern skyldnere. Although the eastern regions of Norway – in particular, perhaps, Oslo and its environs – have a degree of socio-economic prominence within the country, the nature of the terrain, regularly difficult to traverse, along with the strong traditions of local democracy, make this force rather less powerful than might be the case in equivalent but more centralised polities. Thus people from western

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areas tend to speak Western dialects with Western accents (with the exception of the inhabitants of the Bergen area, many of whom speak a dialect very similar to that spoken by the Oslo middle classes, albeit with a Western accent). Given this level of dialect tolerance and, indeed, a relative lack of spread of forms and functional marking from Eastern to Western dialects, it is therefore surprising to find situations where a mix of features from a range of origins are not just occasional but actually prevalent. A particularly striking example of this can be found in two towns, Odda and Tyssedal (Sandve, 1976; see also Kerswill, 2001), associated with the processing of metal ore, founded in western Norway in the early twentieth century, with a workforce derived from a range of place, both within Norway and beyond, a point to which we will return. When the evidence of usage in the two settlements is considered, the use of Western and Eastern forms appears – at least at first glance – not predictable and even somewhat chaotic: Western and Eastern forms ‘jostle’ each other. If we delve deeper, however, it becomes plain that what is driving the linguistic differences between the two settlements – relatively close to each other physically – is the fact that the original external settlers of one – Tyssedal – had a higher proportion of former residents of eastern Norway than did the other: input drives the end result of the koineisation process. Yet this is not the sole impetus for this (or any) koineisation process. There are, in fact, occasions when compromise forms come into being as part of the process, compromise forms not used in any of the source dialects, but which bridge the gap between a range of forms whose opportunities for mutual comprehensibility are problematical. The choices underlying these compromise positions are probably largely unconscious (or at most semi-conscious), but that does not stop them representing a form of ‘invisible hand’ (Keller, 1994) in the creation of new patterns in language. The process (or processes) of koineisation can cover a considerable range of linguistic realities. In particular, differences of linguistic distance in the input dialects are visible between different examples of the phenomenon. Thus the input varieties of Milton Keynes English (Kerswill and Williams, 2000) – largely formed from a mixture of the dialects of working class and middle class immigrants from the urban southeast of England, with limited admixture from the local South Midlands varieties of the Milton Keynes area – are very similar to each other. The variety spoken in the new city, while possessing its own nature and being discrete from its inputs, cannot be especially different because the distance travelled between variety and variety is not at all great. In the case of Fiji Hindi, however, the inputs – Indo-Aryan varieties largely from the valley of the Ganges, spoken by nineteenth century immigrant indentured servants – were markedly different from each other (to the point, in fact, of borderline incomprehension); the koine which resulted was therefore strikingly different from its sources, even if it bore obviously similarities to all of these in one way or another (Siegel, 1987).

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Despite these differences in scope, however, koineisation remains a unitary process. While the developments involved in a koine’s creation are inevitably complex, and involve a considerable amount of change informed and expedited by relationships between back channels, it could be argued that two fundamental principles stand out: compromise and simplification. The first of these, compromise, is in many ways straightforward to exemplify and analyze. In the development of New Zealand English, for instance, a primary tension (if that is the apposite description) existed between those features which derived from the dialects of the South-East of England (speakers of which made up something like a majority of the early Pakeha inhabitants of the new colony) and features associated with the speech of other immigrant groups, of which Scots made up a sizeable part. While certain features of contemporary New Zealand English appear ‘Cockney’, such as the low and central nature of the diphthong associated with the and words, others, such as the retention in historical position of /h/, do not (see Gordon et al., 2004 and Trudgill, 2004). Without necessarily endorsing his deterministic views on new dialect development, it would be difficult to argue with Trudgill (2004)’s assertion that this state derives from issues both of proportion in relation to initial population origin and of markedness – populations which had not gone through ‘/h/loss’ may not have been willing or able to accommodate what to them was a highly unusual if not aberrant feature. Indeed the unique New Zealand short vowel system may represent a degree of compromise between different inputs, while not coinciding with any of them. Simplification is a much more challenging process to define (not least because, under certain circumstances, the term appears to be used in different ways even by the same scholar). Let us consider two examples, however. The original koine glossa ‘common language’ developed in the Greek speaking world at the beginning of the Hellenistic period as the lingua franca of both native Greek speakers and also the many people of the eastern Mediterranean world and beyond who learned Greek because of its hegemonic cultural, political and economic status at this time (Horrocks, 1997). Prior to these linguistic developments, Greek was spoken – and written – in a range of dialects which were often only marginally intelligible with each other. One of these – Attic – became associated with a major literature which encompassed genres as different as tragic drama and speculative philosophy and with legal and governmental texts which were used and copied far beyond its primary focus in Athens and its allies and clients. Attic therefore had considerable and growing prestige, which should have made it the obvious source for the koine glossa; this is indeed largely the case. Yet there were features of its phonology and, in particular, grammar, which made it difficult to learn for speakers of other Greek dialects and second language users. In the koine glossa these issues were largely eliminated, however, in a process which could be described as simplification. Interestingly, however, these new features could also be interpreted as a form of compromise, since they represented the borrowing of features from the Ionian dialects – close relatives of Attic – which realised usages in

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these contexts much closer to, and easier to comprehend in relation to, the patterns found in other Greek dialects. Perhaps more straightforward in relation to simplification is the development of features in Fiji Hindi (as described in Siegel, 1987), which we have already briefly considered above. Let us consider the forms of the definite future found in that variety in relation to the forms realised in its apparent source varieties: Table 15. Indian Hindi dialects and Fiji Hindi definite future suffixes (from Siegel [1987: 115])

1 sg 1 pl 2 sg (masc.) (fem.) 2 pl (masc.) (fem.) 3 sg 3 pl

Bhojpuri

Avadhi

Braje

Fiji Hindi

bō, ab ab, bī, iha bē, ba bī, bis bâ(h) bū ī ih, ē, ihen

Bū Ab bē, ihai

ihaū, aūgau ihaī, aīgai (a)ihai, (a)igau

egā egā egā

bō, bau

(a)ihai, (a)igau

egā

ī, ihai, ē ihaī, aī

(a)ihau, agau (a)ihaī, aīgai

ī ī

The forms as found in Fiji Hindi again represent a compromise between the features found in the Indian input dialects. More strikingly, however, they represent a simplification of the assumed ancestral distribution. The distinctions found in the source varieties between different numbers and on occasion genders (themselves liable to intra- and inter-dialect variation) have been replaced with a much simpler system involving a circumscribed inventory of forms.

7.3 Regional koineisation in the modern age As we have seen, koineisation has been a normal feature of linguistic development throughout human history. It is likely, in fact, to have been common in all societies, even if it was of a rather more casual and adhoc kind in non-literate contexts than has been the case in the literate linguistic ecologies, which we can often observe historically. This would have been particularly true for modern times. A feature which is not so well attested expressly until recent times, however, is the development of regional koines, very probably because of the linguistic centralisation processes discussed above. It is to this concept that we will now turn. Across the industrial and post-industrial world – the territory claimed by globalisation, as it were – there has been a general trend towards linguistic conglomeration at a level lower than national standard, where regional loyalties may be being represented and played out in a manner strikingly different from even the recent past (Britain, 2009; Macafee, 1994; Watt, 2002). What is certain, however, is that



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these new varieties are neither a form of the standard or a version of any particular dialect, instead occupying something like the middle ground between the two (or more) states. In Dutch, an example of this type of language variety is referred to as a tussentaal ‘between language’. An example of this can be found with Limburgs, the highly distinctive dialect spoken in the far south-east of the Netherlands, in many ways closer to the Middle Frankish dialects than the Low Frankish varieties which lie at the heart of modern Standard Dutch. Limburgs is not the sole variety used in that province, however. Many – perhaps most – inhabitants use a Limburgs tussentaal as a halfway house between the dialect and the national standard (Hinskens, 1996). Increasingly, some individuals will use this between language exclusively instead of as an alternative to the highly localised dialects of the region. Similar development patterns are to be found in dialectally complex countries such as Italy (FerrariBridgers, 2010), even if, as is the case with this set of ecologies, tolerance for the use of dialects in local public contexts is considerable. What makes up these ‘between languages’ and renders them discrete from both traditional dialect and a literate standard? In a sense they represent elements of both sources, while innovating in terms of how they interrelate with the sources’ features. As a general rule, however, the structure of the between language is closer to – although it will rarely be the same as – the standard, while its phonology often reflects closely that of the traditional dialects with which, at least to begin with, it coexists. Much of the lexical material which is such a rich and distinctive part of the identity of a traditional dialect is no longer central to the nature of the between language, which shares most of its vocabulary with colloquial varieties closely tied to the standard. These developments mean, essentially, that these new varieties are distinct from the literate varieties through pronunciation; it is through features of pronunciation that their speakers are largely distinguished from speakers of the same language from other regions. Thus many people from the North-East of Scotland, where this paper was written, can be linguistically distinguished from other Scots not primarily through their knowledge of local lexical features – apart, perhaps, from a few stereotypical usages. Rather, it is the preservation of phonological features – such as the use of /f/ with at least some of the words – which would mark off their speech as different and localised. Naturally this new language variety represents a koine, albeit a koine whose inputs are weighted differently according to geographical spread, group and individual identity and overt and covert prestige. Let us consider a Scottish example of this process: the Glasgow dialect (for a fuller discussion, see Millar forthcoming; see also Macafee, 1994). In many ways this variety is a mainstream West Central Scots variety. As a speaker of a fairly traditional – and at least in origin rural – Renfrewshire (one of the counties surrounding Glasgow) dialect, for instance, I find that I am regularly taken for a Glaswegian – even by Glaswegians. Nevertheless, in phonological terms what marks off the urban dialect from its surrounding more rural sisters is minor, with the exception perhaps of the rerr terr at the ferr at Err ‘rare tear [good time] at the fair at Ayr’ phenomenon (many

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Glaswegian varieties have /εr/ where other Scots varieties have /er/) phenomenon. It is in a number of structural and pragmatic features, as well as in a relatively thin lexical spread of the vocabulary associated with traditional dialect usage, that the difference from rural dialects is most marked. Given the city’s history of largescale immigration not only from its surrounding counties but also from the Scottish Highlands and Ireland, it is unsurprising that a range of inputs not associated with Scots should be present in the Glasgow dialect. That is not the point I am trying to make here, however. Rather it is the fact that new varieties of language – koines – can (and do) come into being which at some levels are ‘of the soil’, but whose lexical make-up is relatively far removed from the traditional dialects which were inputs at their inception.

7.4 Fisher speak: the terminal phase of the traditional dialect With these points in mind, let us turn to developments in a range of Scots dialects which traditionally were highly discrete from surrounding varieties but which have, in the last few decades, altered considerably because of changes within the communities themselves and in the local, regional and world economic situation: the dialects of the fishing communities of the east coast of Scotland (for an in-depth discussion, see Millar, Barras and Bonnici, 2014). Unusually, the focus of this study was on lexical innovation and loss in these dialects (a few studies with a sociolinguistic focus do concentrate on lexical variation and change. These include Macafee, 1994; Beal and Burbano-Elizado, 2012; Upton and Widdowson, 1999; see also Durkin, 2012). For a variety of reasons – cultural and occupational in particular – these communities have been distinct from their landward hinterland for centuries. While interaction with their neighbours – often of a commercial sort – was ongoing, there was also considerable mistrust (if not actual dislike) between the communities: ‘the cod and the corn dinna mix’. At the same time, strong connections were maintained between fishing communities located a considerable distance away from each other. These connections (perhaps particularly strong in relation to the annual Herring Fishery, which involved both men and women in a large-scale temporary migration around the British Isles) often included marriage between communities and the development of lifelong friendships. This closeness had a linguistic dimension: the most common word for ‘jumper’ around the coasts of Scotland is ganzie (there are a range of spellings for this word, which suggest slightly variant pronunciations). Interestingly, this distribution includes the usage of Gaelic language fishing communities. It is very likely, in fact, that the word (which appears to derive from Guernsey) was relayed to Scotland via a non-rhotic English dialect – possibly East Anglia, whose ports had strong connections with the Scottish East Coast throughout the period.



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A further connection between many communities was adherence to evangelical Christian denominations – such as the (Plymouth) Brethren (in that tradition’s various forms) and Methodism – not otherwise commonplace in Scotland. This adherence both increased differences with the rural hinterland of each community and also acted as a potent identity symbol for each community. Due to the decline of fish stocks in the North Sea in the course of the twentieth century, partly due to pollution and also as a result of increasing technological advances within the fishing trade itself, as well as changes in consumption habits and also the economies of scale which mitigated against the economic viability of the smaller fishing communities along the Coast, the innate connection between the coastal communities and their former primary occupation (and culture) has been attenuated if not severed. What are likely to be the linguistic effects of changes of this sort? Returning to our proposed typology of retention of traditional dialect features in relation to the creation of regional varieties, it would be entirely unsurprising for local phonological features to survive relatively well in the koine as it forms. While there are some pronunciation differences found between the fishing communities and their rural hinterlands, these are relatively minor. The same could be said for structural features, with the understanding that, as I have already suggested, the koineisation process appears to lend itself towards a movement away from specifically local features. It is with local forms of lexis, however, that we can actually see the move away from the local dialect most strikingly portrayed. It is with this final process that I, along with two collaborators, have spent a large part of the past ten years trying to understand, as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Fisher Speak: variation and change in the lexis of the Scottish Fishing Communities’ (Grant no. RGA 1129). Essentially our work has been concerned with lexical change and attrition in a range of communities whose primary economic focus either now is or recently has been on landing and processing fish. Attempts were made to make our survey as representative as possible – in geographical extent, in size of settlement and in relation to the vitality (or otherwise) of the fishing industry in a particular community, as well as in relation to age and gender. From north to south the communities chosen were Wick (in the far north, historically a major fishing and whaling port; now no commercial fishing), Lossiemouth (on the Moray Firth; strong evangelical tradition; limited commercial fishing), Peterhead (to the north of Aberdeen; still a major commercial fishing centre), Anstruther (a small community which is part of the larger East Neuk of Fife region; limited commercial fishing; home of the Scottish Fisheries Museum) and Eyemouth (on the present Scottish Border; limited commercial fishery). In each of these communities an open-ended questionnaire was applied to people from a range of age groups and both genders, attempting to ascertain the range and level of knowledge of local lexis. While there was an obvious concentration on the

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fishing trade and coastal-based vocabulary in local usage, information on use and knowledge across a wide range of everyday experience was actively sought. Underlying this questionnaire were a range of resources, both local and national, used to create a Corpus, a baseline to test the project’s fieldwork material. Central was the Scots Thesaurus (Macleod, Cairns, Macafee and Martin, 1990), which provides a meaning-based (rather than lemmatised) version of the Concise Scots Dictionary (Robinson, 1989), itself an abridged version of the Scottish National Dictionary (Grant and Murison 1929–1976), the last representing an attempt at collating and analyzing all Scots words used since around the beginning of the eighteenth century, using both written (largely literary) resources and the results of fieldwork carried out in the middle of the twentieth century. Less scholarly, although also dealing with the whole of Scotland, are texts like the A glossary of Scottish dialect fish and trade names (Watt, 1989), produced by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland as a means by which inspectors and other functionaries would be able to ascertain which fish were being landed, collating and connecting the Standard English names for species and for different stages in the development of species to the local terminology, providing as many names as possible, largely (I suspect) to make sure that no possibly of ambiguity could be present in what was being discussed. At the other end of the scale are brief pamphlets giving a range of highly localised vocabulary (or at least the authors/compilers considered the lexical items peculiarly local – they are often more widespread than might be thought). Some compilations have been produced by individuals, such as ‘In my ain words’: an East Neuk vocabulary (Murray, 1982); others appear to have been brought together by a group, often associated with a local library or heritage society. Such brevity does not preclude the production of highly useful and illuminating work, as the Lossie Glossie (no date), produced by Lossiemouth residents under the aegis of the local library, demonstrates (indeed the Fisher Speak project was privileged to receive a marked up version of the Lossie Glossie where entries had been made more specific and less ambiguous: there was a strong sense that this was a product in which local people had invested a great deal of time, effort and emotional commitment). Other compilations of this type are less convincing. A striking example of this is As spoken in Berwick: the unique dialect (Kennington, 2006), put together by a single person and demonstrating his ideological position and interests. Thus the pamphlet makes only limited reference to the Scots origin of a large part of the lexis used in Berwick-upon-Tweed and exemplified in his work (Berwick is an anomaly in English-Scottish relations, an historically Scottish town presently incorporated in England; not all Berwick people consider themselves English, but some do; some may choose not to look north in search for relationships). More importantly, he includes little or no fishing vocabulary in his pamphlet (with the exception of some discussion of the lexis of the salmon fishery on the River Tweed); this is surprising given the former importance of Berwick in the herring fishery in particular. Despite its drawbacks, however, we were obliged to use the work



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because no discussion of the lexis of coastal Berwickshire, where Eyemouth (some 15 kilometres north of Berwick) is situated, exists. In between these two states are a number of regional dictionaries and word lists. These include the Caithness Dictionary (Sutherland, 1992) and the Doric Dictionary (Kynoch, 2004). These provide a useful insight into what is considered regional use. The first of these provides considerable evidence of being collated from extensive fieldwork, although the lack of much reference to place of collection renders this initial work less useful. The Doric Dictionary represents a more literary approach, with evidence both of influence from national resources (such as the Scottish National Dictionary) and a classically lexicographical employment of historical material in its compilation. This second issue is not without its own problems, however, since the use of historical and literary sources can easily skew our understanding of present practice; this is particularly the case with the Doric Dictionary, since it does not always mark what is current and what is literary or historical. Alongside these attempts at the employment of scholarly method are a small number of works – such as Buchan Claik (Buchan and Toulmin, 1989) – which combine a genuine desire to catalogue the lexical use patterns of a particular region with the intention to entertain as well as enlighten. While collections of this type can sometimes demonstrate a less than scholarly method in relation to the laying out of material, the vibrancy of usage which locals can present easily outweighs this. A central aim of the Fisher Speak project was to bring together our understanding of past usage collected in these resources and evidence for present knowledge and usage as established in the questionnaire. A further issue, central to the concerns underlying this paper, was the extent to which local distinctiveness appeared to be preserved in the face of new local, national and global developments which had altered the communities’ cultural and economic associations. In order to carry out this research, the five settlements chosen were treated to relatively long term observation and interaction through the application of questionnaires by William Barras and Lisa Marie Bonnici over the autumn, winter and spring of 2010 to 2011, their findings being analyzed primarily by me in the course of 2011 and early 2012. Barras and Bonnici jointly collected the Wick and Lossiemouth material, with Bonnici taking primary responsibility for Peterhead and Barras for Anstruther and Eyemouth. All informants were made aware of the purpose of the research, what would be expected of them, that all returns would be anonymised and that they could withdraw from the study at any time they wished. Informants were either recruited directly or through local contacts made through previous fieldwork and other connections or in the course of the study. Associations such as the various Fishermen’s societies, local libraries, museums and heritage societies, as well as organisations such as the Salvation Army (which offer various social clubs), also kindly offered their services in finding informants – particularly important, perhaps, with older informants whose mobility and public presence were perhaps not as marked as they once were. The project was heavily committed to recruiting

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informants across the age scale for both genders. While this was generally achieved, it needs to be recognised that, while initially it was older people who proved difficult to recruit, for the reasons outlined above, younger people also provided issues when it came to recruitment, largely because of their commitments to work and family. We also suspected that some potential informants – perhaps particularly the young – did not see the point of the survey and chose not to take part. The social background of the informants was not investigated. While some members of the fishing community are richer – occasionally significantly richer – than other members, a strong egalitarian ethos is embraced by practically all.

7.4.1 Findings of the project Naturally a project of this scale cannot be readily summarised in a limited space. It is also helpful to recognise that the actual findings of the project, while by no means chaotic, were certainly diverse and not fully amenable to classification following a relatively prescriptive model. Nevertheless, a number of issues are common to the findings from each location and from these an argument can be made for a logically coherent dissection of the material collected.

7.4.1.1 Survival of lexical items While it is certainly true that many of the lexical items which we know were present in these communities until quite recently appear no longer to be current in either community knowledge or use, quite a few still are. There was, for instance, considerable knowledge of local words for ‘seagull’. In Peterhead, for instance, most informants knew that the birds were called scorries, while in Wick they were scurries and in Lossiemouth gows. Anstruther informants generally knew that the local name for the bird was either cuttsy or cutty. With the northern communities in particular, it was striking that not only did many people know the local name; they also recognised those used in nearby settlements and, occasionally, communities at a considerable distance. Thus Peterhead people often knew that the word for ‘seagull’ in nearby Fraserburgh was myaave. They also knew, however, that people in Gamrie (officially Gardenstown, some distance north and west from Peterhead) called the bird pewlie. Lossiemouth informants also knew what to them was the eastern pewlie; Wick folk were aware that people from their rival town of Thurso (on the north coast of Caithness) called seagulls maas. Interestingly, some evidence from older speakers in both Peterhead and Wick suggested that these usage boundaries were not as absolute in the relatively recent past; it could be argued, in fact, that quite recently these words became identity symbols, perhaps at a time that the originally free flowing relationships between ports were beginning to falter. Evidence for this connection with identity construction can be found in the fact that in some communities



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localised names were used as a badge of identity – thus the local football team in Wick is affectionately known as the Scorries – or as a not particularly serious term of abuse to be thrown at members of another community. This level of knowledge is particularly striking when it is recognised how unpopular seagulls are with coastal people (terms like shite hawks turned up regularly in our research). But given this body of evidence, it is very striking that we were unable to elicit any local terms for this bird in Eyemouth.

7.4.1.2 Loss of lexical items Almost inevitably, much of the technical vocabulary associated with the fishing trade was known only by older informants, along with some middle aged volunteers who often appeared to take a particular interest in the trade as a cultural artefact rather than a reality of their everyday (past) lives. Even in ports, such as Peterhead, still involved in the fishing trade to a considerable extent, this was largely the case, primarily, it can be surmised, because the technology of fishing had changed so rapidly that old local terms had been lost without much in the way of replacement by new local terms. The trade has been globalized, meaning that many boats have crew who do not hail from the home port and its immediate hinterland; changes in work practices and the need for plentiful amounts of fish have meant that employment in fishing is significantly less normal in the community than it was a hundred years ago. Thus a word like scull (otherwise scoo or scow, a basket used for holding baited smaw lines, lines of some length with multiple hooks, used to catch cod and other fish relatively close to land), was known only by a limited number of informants in the northern ports and in Anstruther (with Eyemouth informants demonstrating little or no awareness of the term). These informants were generally in the older age groups; this is unsurprising, given that the line fishery largely gave way in most communities to the use of nets in the period immediately after the Second World War. Interestingly, however, some younger informants did have a vague understanding that the word referred to a basket, although not that it was associated with the line fishery (a long passed part of the trade they may not have known about). A number of the younger informants who recognised the basket connection were women who worked in the heritage industry, a point to which we will return. This tendency is also marked in relation to the clothes which fishermen (and occasionally fishwives) wore. A striking example of this is barkin. Before the advent of plastic clothing, everyday dress (albeit often designed for ease of use while fishing) was treated with a liquid produced from the bark of trees grown in Borneo and other islands in that archipelago to provide some waterproof qualities. This substance was applied manually, often by women of the community (although also by older men and those males not presently at sea; the same process was used for nets before nylon became available) onto many kinds of clothing, including jumpers and what would now be termed cagoules. It was fairly effective. While the term was recognised and

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even remembered fondly by older and middle aged informants, again, however, level of knowledge of the process and its products was very low among younger informants, except, again, for a number of younger women who worked in the heritage business. This group appeared largely to know the name and that it was connected to the trade, without fully understanding what its purpose was. It is striking to compare this ongoing loss with the treatment of the essentially modern and practically universal sou’wester, clothing made waterproof through the use of waxcloth (or oilcloth) or more recently plastic. Most informants of all age groups offered this term, often as the first item mentioned. Interestingly, a number of subjects Scotticised the term, rendering it as soo(th)waster, or variants, perhaps in an attempt to claim the word for themselves as a local identity symbol. So far we have considered lexical material associated closely with the fishing trade. Given that employment in that trade has declined in all of the ports studied, even where any fishing at all is still allowed, it is unsurprising that this lexical material should have survived largely only among older and middle aged informants. When we move beyond these contexts, however, it is striking that local terms related to matters other than fishing and its associated occupations regularly follow very similar patterns of lack of use and disappearance. A striking example of this is ware (otherwise waar or waur, depending upon the region), arguably the most common word for ‘seaweed’ historically along the Scottish east coast. While in most ports – in particular the northern ones – this word was known by some younger informants, many did not recognise the word at all, even after some prompting. This demands some consideration. Given the omnipresence of seaweed (and its smell in particular) in all coastal regions, it is surprising that local terms would have been discarded. It is almost as if some younger informants have turned their backs to the sea since it no longer supplies sustenance. It is more complex than this, however. The agricultural hinterland of most of the communities studied was fertilised using seaweed well into living memory. Chemical fertilisation has meant that this old symbiosis between ‘cod’ and ‘corn’ has slipped definitively into the past; the utility therefore of seaweed, which made it visible (and pungent), therefore providing a reason for the survival of local terms, has now gone for younger people. Interestingly, for older people ware also has fish associations: a waary cod is a red fish which lives largely among seaweed. The concept of seaweed appears, for many younger people, to be represented by external, possibly school-taught, lexis.

7.4.1.3 ‘Thinning’ of lexis and meaning A further regular (and related) feature in our research was an attenuation, a ‘thinning’, of lexical use. Our corpus demonstrated that, often, multiple lexical items had once existed which related to essentially the same being, thing or concept, regularly representing subtle, but important, distinctions in meaning and association. One semantic field in which this was readily apparent was connected with the different



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stages found in the development of fish in different species. Names for ‘haddock’ represent a case in point, since this fish was for long a feature of the Scottish fishing trade, is central to the provision of fish for chip shops along the east coast and has, in the last three decades at least, been severely threatened by overfishing and related developments. The corpus provides a range of words for different stages of maturity for this particular fish (or size, which need not necessarily refer to the same measurement); while some are common along the coast, others are confined to specific regions. Strikingly, few of the words recorded in these resources were actually offered by any of the informants in any of the ports. But while some older informants did distinguish between different sizes and ages of haddock, such as chipper for a medium sized fish well suited to employment in a fish and chip shop, while jumbo or Dannie referred, unsurprisingly, to a larger fish (it is striking, as an aside, to note that terms of this type refer to the processing rather than catching of fish), most younger and some middle-aged informants could go no further than offering haddie, the local form used for haddock of any size at any life cycle stage (whose use might be reinforced by the use of the term as a very mild term of abuse, particular used about children). Even this term appeared unknown to some younger residents of the ports. Again it could be argued that ‘thinning’ on this occasion has been brought on largely by the decline of the fishing trade before these younger informants had the opportunity (or, indeed, need) to learn these terms. As striking, however, are those occasions where knowledge of a range of terms for weather conditions is lessened considerably according largely to the age gradient. In a sense this is unsurprising: for people who are not involved in the fishing trade (or whose relatives are not involved: it is worth remembering that a sizeable portion of the Eyemouth fishing fleet and its crewmen were wiped out within sight of the port in the later nineteenth century, for instance), weather is less visceral, less central, to everyday life. The experience of living in a coastal environment where changing patterns of weather are omnipresent and provide a topic at the very least for everyday conversation would, it might be suggested, encourage the survival of local terminology, however. This is not really the case. While some knowledge of local and regional lexis for these states remains across the age groups, particularly in the northern ports, this is extremely patchy except among older informants. Middle aged informants often offered a set of generic terms, such as roch or coorse for bad weather, with the typically laconic no (or nae) bad for all other circumstances. The young generally offered colloquial English terms, albeit sometimes with local pronunciations. The evidence appears to suggest a relatively rapid move away from the local towards a linguistic state where lexical use at least is no longer analyzed as an identity symbol, whether local, regional or Scottish.

7.4.1.4 Broadening of meaning Related to the last discussed phenomenon (and often very similar to it) is what might be termed ‘broadening’ of meaning. On a number of occasions a word with an

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originally precise and focussed meaning has apparently had this meaning broadened to encompass a range of states which previously were associated with a number of lexical items which have apparently been lost or reassigned. A striking example of this is madge (otherwise mattie and a range of variants; the word is probably a borrowing from Dutch). It appears originally to have meant ‘maiden herring’, a fish which has not yet spent its roe. Marking distinctions of this type lexically was very important in the fishing trade: landing a fish which had not as yet had the chance to breed was essentially cutting your own throat. While this original meaning was known sporadically in the communities studied, particularly by older informants, and some informants (often of the same age background) said that the word meant ‘young herring’, which encapsulates most of the original meaning while leaving out the vital point of marking future fecundity, many of the informants who knew the word could only say that it meant ‘herring’. Most of these (but not all) were younger members of the communities. Evidence of this sort could certainly be taken as implying that younger speakers of the local dialects had lost the full meaning of the word while retaining some sense of what it referred to. To be fair, however, it is possible that the communities themselves rarely associated as precise a meaning with the words they used as commentators and compilers of dictionaries and other inventories did. To demonstrate what this means, let us consider buckie. In most national surveys and analyses, buckie ‘shellfish (particularly whelk); shell of said creature’, is provided with much premodification, most of which distinguish between different – although similar – kinds of shellfish: thus horse buckie is said to mean ‘winkle’. Strikingly, hardly any of these distinctions were recognised in our fieldwork. Indeed even the oldest informants did not recognise this structure with a very limited number of exceptions, such as John o Groats buckie and variants, referring to a particular striking shell more than the creature inside. This does not seem to represent a broadening of meaning (at least not in the recent past); instead, it seems that the community itself does not recognise premodification of this word as a central feature of local speech. While the resources which exemplify these patterns are unlikely to be ill-informed, it must be assumed that the natural lexicographer’s urge to specify and break down categories has meant that originally rare constructions have been given more prominence than they probably deserve. This does not mean, however, that all such anomalies between the corpus and the reported reality can be explained in this way. A further striking example of this phenomenon can be found with the word farlan (otherwise faurlan or foreland), a term at one time used all along the coast to refer to the receptacle into which fisher lassies/quines threw gutted herring (or alternatively the receptacle from which workers retrieved herring for gutting). This particular word was chosen for consideration by informants as a means of redressing the gender balance almost inevitable when focussing on the lexis of fishing communities. The term was generally well known among older and middle aged informants in the northern communities and Anstruther (although not in Eyemouth, a surprising fact given how



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closely that port was connected to the herring fishery until relatively recently). It was also known by a number of younger people, women in particular. What is interesting about many of these younger and middle aged informants’ discussion of the term, however, is that an exact awareness of the term’s meaning is largely absent. Most are very much aware that the term refers to the herring fishery and was associated with women, possibly working at a bench. Many, however, could not take this association any further. It might even be suggested that knowledge of these terms was connected to the viewing of photographs and other rather passive connections associated with the heritage industry; this might particularly be the case with the younger women mentioned above, but is not confined to them.

7.4.1.5 Knowledge and use Throughout this discussion, knowledge of local terms has been the presiding analytical tool. This is not, of course, an entirely helpful means of viewing the data collected. Any speaker of any language knows a great many words and phrases which she does not use. Thus I know the word turpitude well and can easily formulate a definition. I have only ever used the word in, essentially, quotation marks when discussing legal or official terminology. The only person I have ever heard using this term outside those domains was a very good non-native speaker. In the communities in which the Fisher Speak survey was carried out, several older, ‘good’, local informants pointed out that, while they knew a particular word and phrase, they would not use it themselves. Even more strikingly, a number remarked that they were ‘digging deep’ into their memories to provide an answer. On the other hand, one middle-aged informant provided a large part of the specific and local lexis offered in Eyemouth. This knowledge appeared to represent a personal interest, essentially a hobby, rather than an actual and ongoing connection with the fishing trade. Commentary of this type is hardly indicative of current usage patterns. Much of the lexical material referred to in this way was intrinsically related to the fishing trade and could therefore be connected to the passing of practice and use discussed above. Some was not, however.

7.4.2 Summary Simplifying somewhat, therefore, it could be argued that a cline of lack of knowledge exists in these communities. Even the oldest informants do not always use lexical items they know; sometimes this cannot be explained in relation to changes in society and technology, however. Much that was once local and associated with the community largely in an unmarked and at most semi-conscious way has either been lost altogether, simplified in association or remembered rather than used. That some specialist lexis has been carried forward into the present can often be attributed to the knowledge in a highly marked way of some young people (particularly women) who

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work in the heritage industry. Without this prop, it is unlikely that much specifically local lexis would have survived at all among the younger informants.

7.5 Dialect death? This paper was given a provocative title – dialect death (similar terminology is used by Britain, 2009 and to a lesser extent by Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 1995). I have used this consciously and for a particular purpose – to bring the decline and disappearance of traditional dialect into focus. Let us consider in the first instance what we understand theoretically about the process of language death (or language shift, if you prefer). There is, of course, considerable disagreement over how precisely to describe and analyze this process; perhaps the most convincing model is that of the late Hans-Jürgen Sasse, first published in 1992. This model proceeds from an important and natural insight: language death is caused by largely sociolinguistic forces, but is played out both linguistically and sociolinguistically. In a sense the sociolinguistic factors are straightforward. Lessening status for what Sasse terms the A (= Abandoned) variety leads inevitably to a situation where speakers (particularly upwardly mobile speakers) use the T (= Target) variety when speaking about external, or abstract or prestigious topics, since A has lost (or never had established) a vocabulary for topics of this type. Inevitably the assumed weaknesses of A in this and related respects leads to the same groups being less than keen to use A with their children, thereby meaning that a generation comes into being where at least some of the cohort do not have their ethnic language as their first language. This is not the end of the trajectory of A, however. Although some children will no longer have A as their first language, they will almost inevitably pick up some of the language from their parents in unguarded moments, from grandparents and other family members who have not made the linguistic leap to T that the parents have done (and may, in fact, be opposed to it) and most importantly, in fact, from age peers whose families have not taken part in this leap either. It should be noted, however, that the late learning of A by these children is likely to have considerable effects on the kind of A they produce. It is unlikely, for instance, that all the grammatical nuances found originally in the language will be replicated in their version of A, a point shown markedly in the changes in the grammatical gender system of the Australian language Dyirbal in recent years. This group make up a large part of what Dorian (1981) termed semi-speakers. In her work on East Sutherland Gaelic she demonstrated that central features of Gaelic morphosyntax, such as initial consonant mutation and Verb Subject Object element order, were unlikely to be replicated by semi-speakers, since they were in conflict with the structural patterns of their dominant English/Scots. Lexis, on the other hand, was likely to be remembered fairly well. Dorian envisaged semi-speakers being laid out on a continuum. Some would nearly pass as full native speakers of



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Gaelic, while others had considerable difficulty producing even straightforward utterances in the language. Most fell somewhere in between these poles. Structural variation of this sort was new to the local language and had considerable knock-on effects. Not least of these, as Sasse points out, is the fact that the ‘degradation’ of the language, as perceived by some, means that many speakers of A who had not previously considered the leap to T, now do so, since their language is, in their view, ‘corrupt’; this view is probably cemented by the fact that the semi-speakers’ A variety might well have been taken up in part by native speakers in their age cohort, perhaps as a marker of ‘youth’ identity (seldom a good thing in the view of the older generation). If a sufficient number of A speakers choose to abandon active use of the language at this point, it will become essentially moribund in a few generations at most. What is striking about Sasse’s model, however, is that it does not end at this point. In fact, he postulates an ‘after life’ for A, with elements – normally lexical but also occasionally encompassing structural features – of the abandoned language continuing to be used by members of the A community long after the language is apparently dead. Many Jewish people of Ashkenazi background who are at least partly secularised and do not speak Yiddish nonetheless use a number of phrases from that language, in particular when they refer to specific practices – and foods – from their community. A particularly striking example can be found in the partial survival – into at least the end of the nineteenth century – of elements of Norn, the former language of Shetland and Orkney, even though the language had been replaced by Scots (with English in writing) by around the middle of the eighteenth century, no doubt due to conflicting views on utility and identity (see Millar forthcoming). Eventually, of course, too much ‘static’ builds up in this kind of ‘feedback loop’ for any element to be comprehensible; its importance to at least some members of the community is obviously very real nonetheless. Can any of these points be related to the process by which discrete dialects become connected and eventually subsumed into larger scale linguistic constructs, such as the regional koines discussed above? With a heightened awareness of the differences which genuinely exist between dialects and languages both realistically and conceptually, the answer must be that this is, indeed, the case, at least in part. Within the context of the research discussed in this paper, this can be seen most strikingly in the partial understanding of what specific lexical items mean or their connections. This type of partial awareness can be interpreted in a number of ways, but is undoubtedly part of an ongoing process where ideas and concepts gradually (or possibly at times rapidly) move into a past sphere towards which natives are only partly connected. At times this connection may be strengthened through certain features of the community past becoming a central part of the heritage industry. It needs to be recognised that such a foregrounding is essentially artificial, with words and phrases being remembered without the surrounding lexical and cultural apparatus. Equally

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striking, perhaps, is that in the final stages of the language’s life, those who cross over to T carry with them features – lexical, phonological and structural – into T. Sasse terms these varieties as TA. A particularly striking example of this can be found in some varieties of Irish English, where Irish is an undoubted source for certain of the features found in the variety, essentially unknown anywhere else in the Englishspeaking world. In the Fisher Speak research it is probably understandable that words and phrases connected to the fishing industry, moribund in most communities and altered considerably through technological and cultural innovation where it continues, should have suffered most from attrition. What is less predictable is that words with whole community application, such as those related to the discussion and classification of weather, also appear to have suffered from attrition (Schmid 2011). Strikingly, people from the same background and age group often have very different levels of knowledge in relation to the inherited local variety. Indeed it is really only with the use of what might be termed community symbols – such as the names for seagulls – that we see (near-) complete community knowledge and application of the lexical items. These last two features in particular represent phenomena not really different from those proposed by Sasse for the end stage of the A variety. It would seem perverse not to consider these phenomena as running in tandem. It also seems likely that the place of aspirational parents in choosing to move away from the local variety would also be applicable to the loss of dialect, as would the new ‘youth’ ‘corrupt’ variety, with the proviso that the A dialect can blend more readily into the T variety than can the A language, albeit in a TA way. The replacement for this past diversity and specificity is not newly coined or adapted lexis but rather a regional koine (or koines), whose constitution is not as yet entirely clear. In its wake, however, lies a dying dialect.

References Beal, Joan and Lourdes Burbano-Elizado. 2012. ‘All the Lads and Lasses’: lexical variation in Tyne and Wear – A discussion of how the traditional dialect terms lad and lass are still used in the modern urban dialects of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland’. English Today 4. 10–22. Berg, Guy. 1993. ‘Mir wëlle bleiwe, wat mir sin’. Soziolinguistische und sprachtypologische Betrachtungen zur luxemburgischen Mehrsprachigkeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Britain, David. 2009. One foot in the grave? Dialect death, dialect contact, and dialect birth in England. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 196/197. 121–155. Buchan, Peter and David Toulmin. 1989. Buchan claik: the saut an the glaur o’t. A compendium of words and phrases from the north-east of Scotland. Edinburgh: Gordon Wright. Dorian, Nancy. 1981. Language death: The life cycle of a Scottish dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dossena, Marina. 2005. Scotticisms in grammar and vocabulary: ‘like runes upon a standin’ stane’? Edinburgh: Donald.

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Durkin, Philip. 2012. Variation in the lexicon: the “Cinderella” of sociolinguistics? Why does variation in word forms and word meanings present such challenges for empirical research?. English Today 4. 3–9. Ferrari-Bridgers, Franca. 2010. The Ripano dialect: towards the end of a mysterious linguistic island in the heart of Italy. In Robert McColl Millar (ed.), Marginal dialects: Scotland, Ireland and beyond, 131–149. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster. Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury and Peter Trudgill. 2004. New Zealand English: Its origins and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grant, William and David Murison (eds.) 1929–1976. The Scottish National Dictionary. Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association. Hinskens, Frans. 1996. Dialect levelling in Limburg: Structural and sociolinguistic aspects. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Horrocks, Geoffrey C. 1997. Greek: a history of the language and its speakers. London: Longmans. Keller, Rudi. 1994. On language change: the invisible hand in language change. London: Routledge. Kennington, Fred. 2006. As spoken in Berwick: the unique dialect. A dialect dictionary. Stockport: F.L. Kennington. Kerswill, Paul. 2001. Koineization and accommodation. In J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 669–702. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kerswill, Paul & Ann Williams. 2000. Creating a New Town koiné: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29. 65–115. Kynoch, Douglas. 2004. A Doric dictionary. 2nd edn. Dalkeith: Scottish Cultural Press. Lossie Glossie = Anonymous. No date. Lossie Glossie. Lossiemouth: Lossiemouth Library. Macafee, Caroline. 1994. Traditional dialect in the modern world: a Glasgow case study. Frankfurt: Lang. MacLeod, Iseabail, with Pauline Cairns, Caroline Macafee and Ruth Martin. 1990. Scots Thesaurus. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Millar, Robert McColl. 2005. Language, nation and power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Millar, Robert McColl. 2012. Varieties of English: Scots. In Alexander Bergs & Laurel Brinton (eds.), Historical linguistics of English 2, 1951–1960. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Millar, Robert McColl. Forthcoming. Contact: The interaction of closely related varieties and the history of English (to be published by Edinburgh University Press, Autumn 2016). Millar, Robert McColl (ed.). 2010. Marginal dialects: Scotland, Ireland and beyond. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster. Murray, Mary. 1982. ‘In my ain words’: an East Neuk vocabulary. Anstruther: Scottish Fisheries Museum. Millar, Robert McColl, William Barras & Lisa Marie Bonnici. 2014. Lexical variation and attrition in the Scottish fishing communities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Robinson, Mairi. 1999. Concise Scots dictionary. Edinburgh: Polygon. Sandve, B.H. 1976. Om talemålet i industristatene Odda og Tyssedal. Generasjonsskilnad of tilnærmind mellom de to målfora. [On the spoken language in the industrial towns Odda and Tyssedal. Generational differences and convergence between the two dialects]. Unpublished Cand.philol. dissertation, University of Bergen. Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1992. Theory of language death. In Matthias Brenzinger (ed.), Language death. Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa, 7–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Schmid, Monika S. 2011. Language attrition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegel, Jeff. 1985. Koinés and koinéisation. Language in Society 14. 357–378.

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Siegel, Jeff. 1987. Language contact in a plantation environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sutherland, Iain. 1992. The Caithness dictionary. Wick: Iain Sutherland. Trudgill, Peter. 2004. New-Dialect formation: the inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Upton, Clive and John D.A. Widdowson. 1999. Lexical erosion in English regional dialects. Sheffield: National Centre for English Cultural Tradition. Watt, Dominic. 2002. “I don’t speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent”: Contact-induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6. 44–63. Watt, Robert A. 1989. A glossary of Scottish dialect fish and trade names. Scottish fisheries information pamphlet 17. Aberdeen: Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland. Wolfram, Walt & Natalie Schilling-Estes. 1995. Moribund Dialects and the Endangerment Canon: the Case of the Ocracoke Brogue. Language 71. 696–721.

Hanna Rutkowska

8 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books: Grapheme distribution and vowel length indication The present study is an attempt at assessing the level of consistency in the orthographic systems of selected sixteenth and seventeenth-century printers and at tracing the influence that normative writings could have potentially exerted on them. The approach taken here draws upon the philological tradition of examining and comparing several texts written in the same language, but produced at different times. The study discusses the orthography of the editions of The Schoole of Vertue, a manual of good conduct for children, published between 1557 and 1687. The orthographic variables taken into account fall into two criteria: the distribution and functional load of the selected graphemes and the indication of vowel length. Keywords: early printers, orthography, spelling, Early Modern English, orthographic variables, standardization.

8.1 Aims, corpus and methodology Orthography understood as a codified and socially binding norm is a relatively recent notion. Although spelling started to raise interest among early linguists already in the sixteenth century (e.g., Smith, 1568 and Hart, 1569), it had not achieved standardization before the second half of the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, by the end of that century, it had become largely regular in printed documents (Scragg, 1974; Salmon, 1999; Görlach, 2001). The question, which so far remains controversial and under-researched, is whether the regularization and standardization of English orthography should be attributed to the early modern phoneticians, orthoepists, spelling reformers and lexicographers (Brengelman, 1980; Carney, 1994; Milroy and Milroy, 1999) or to printers and publishers (Krapp, 1909; Howard-Hill, 2006; Rutkowska, 2013). To date, few authors have undertaken detailed analyses of spelling patterns in early printed documents (Blake, 1965; Osselton, 1984; Aronoff, 1989; Horobin, 2001; Rutkowska, 2005, 2013; and Howard-Hill, 2006), but even these case studies point to the potentially significant role of the printers in the establishment of the orthographic system of Modern English. The present study is an attempt at tracing the development of spelling practices in several editions of a popular manual of good manners entitled The Schoole of Vertue, published between 1557 and 1687, as well as identifying potential influences of normative writings on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printers. In fact, no formal distinction is made in this study into publishers, printers and compositors, because these occupations were frequently © 2016 Hanna Rutkowska This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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overlapping in the earliest printing houses (Duff, 1906: 72; de Hamel, 1983: 29). Individual printing houses which issued the particular editions studied here are treated as entities whose orthographic “house styles” are investigated (if these can be identified). The approach taken here draws upon the philological tradition of examining and comparing several texts written in the same language, but produced at different times. The study discusses the orthography of twelve sixteenth-century and seventeenthcentury editions of The Schoole of Vertue. The first known edition is a manual of good conduct for children written by Francis Seager (Segar), printed and published by William Seares (Seres) in 1557.62 All the subsequent editions contain both the manual and a set of various prayers. The manual covers two thirds of the text and the prayers one third. This compilation was prepared by Robert Crowley, and first published by Henry Denham63 in 1582. The other editions analyzed in this study comprise those printed by John Charlewood for Richard Jones (1593), G. E. (possibly George Elde) for T. P. (full name not known) and I. W. (conceivably John Wright senior) (1621), 64 M. (Miles?) Flesher for Robert Bird (1626, 1630, 1635, and 1640), M. Flesher for John Wright (junior, 1660),65 E. Crowch for J. (John) Wright (1670), an anonymous printer for J. (John) Wright (1677), as well as an anonymous printer for M. W. (full name not known) and George Conyers (1687). The texts under analysis have the form an electronic database of transcriptions of the editions based on the facsimiles available at Early English Books Online (henceforth EEBO).66 The corpus contains 87,737 running words. The exact word counts of the analyzed copies of particular editions as well as their catalogue numbers are provided in Table 16. According to the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), two other editions were produced, in 1642 and 1698, but these are not available at EEBO. As for the other physical features of the editions, presumably all of them were issued in the small, octavo format, and printed mostly in blackletter, with the title

62 The title of this edition suggests that it is not the first one, because it was “[n]ewely perused, corrected, and augmented”, but neither Pollard and Redgrave’s Short Title Catalogue nor ESTC provide any record of an earlier edition. Some years of publication and names of the printers (or publishers) have been reconstructed. These years and names are provided in square brackets in Table 16 and in the References. In the body of the chapter, these square brackets are avoided for aesthetic reasons. 63 According to the colophon, he was “the assigne of W. Seres” (1582, D7v). In this and the other citations from The Schoole, the capital letter refers to the quire, the number to the leaf and the small letter to the side of the leaf, i.e., r to the front side (recto) and v to the back side (verso). 64 George Elde and John Wright cooperated at least in some occasions (see Rutkowska, 2013: 68–69 for details). 65 In 1642 John Wright junior took over 62 copyrights which had belonged to Robert Bird and Edward Brewster (Plomer 1907: 198). 66 The transcription of the first edition of The Schoole can be consulted at EEBO, but I decided to prepare my own transcriptions of all the editions available in the form of facsimiles.



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pages, running heads, titles of sections, chapter initials, and some important words (mainly names) highlighted in the Roman typeface in the majority of the editions. Table 16. The analyzed editions of The Schoole of Vertue Publication year

(Printer’s and) Publisher’s name

Catalogue no.

Word count

1557 1582 1593 1621 [1626] [c. 1630] [c. 1635] [c. 1640] [c. 1660] [1670] 1677 1687

William Seares (Seres) H[enry] Denham [John Charlewood for] Richard Jones G. E. for T. P. and I. W. M. Flesher for Robert Bird M. Flesher for Robert Bird M. Flesher for Robert Bird [M. Flesher for Robert Bird] M. Flesher for John Wright E. Crowch, for J. Wright Anonym for J. Wright Anonym for M. W. and George Conyers

STC 22135 STC 22136 STC 22137 STC 22137.7 STC 22138 STC 22138.3 STC 22138.5 STC 22138.7 Wing S2171 Wing S2412C Wing S2412D Wing S2412E Total

4,932 7,760 7,523 7,525 7,517 7,513 7,512 7,309 7,542 7,529 7,537 7,538 87,737

The main focus of this chapter is the realization and development of several orthographic variables in all the editions under consideration. The variables taken into account fall into two criteria: the distribution and functional load of selected graphemes,67 and the indication of vowel length. The discussion of the findings of the present study is divided into two sections, (2) and (3), one for the each of the criteria. The indication of vowel length is listed beside orthographic distinction between homophones as well as the establishment of morphological and etymological spelling in Salmon (1999: 21), all of which are considered crucial in the research on orthographic standardization in English. Wherever relevant, comparisons are made with the findings of the extensive study analyzing printers’ orthographic systems in thirteen editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes (henceforth KS) published between 1506 and 1656, summarized in Rutkowska (2013). The KS corpus is approximately ten times larger than that comprising The Schoole editions. All the tables and figures refer to The Schoole editions. Unless indicated otherwise, the tables and discussions contain absolute values. The years of publication (not

67 When discussing the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes, I also use the terms (nouns) consonantal and vocalic in this chapter, with reference to graphemes corresponding to consonants and vowels, respectively (following Wełna, 1982: 10). A consonantal may, occasionally, refer to a sequence of graphemes, if they correspond to a single consonant, as for instance, in speech.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

sigils) will be used to refer to particular editions in order to facilitate comparisons across the editions with regard to the chronology of changes. The spelling patterns and orthographic variants identified in The Schoole of Vertue (henceforth The Schoole) editions are set against the prescriptive and proscriptive recommendations of contemporary language authorities and their potential influence on the choices of the printers is assessed. The works consulted for the purposes of this project comprise over thirty sources, e.g., Hart (1569), Mulcaster (1582), Clement (1587), Cawdrey (1604), Cockeram (1623), Butler (1633), Daines (1640), Wharton (1654), Coles (1674), and Ellis (1680).

8.2 Distribution of graphemes One of the elements in the regularization of spelling in the books printed in English in the early modern period was the introduction and spread of the modern rules of grapheme distribution and graphophonemic correspondences. The graphemes affected by these changes include, most characteristically, and , as well as , and . The findings of the present study concerning their distribution show the interrelations between particular graphemes (and phonemes) as well as between spelling and typography. The results regarding the distribution of graphemes in The Schoole editions are compared with the findings of the study on the KS (see particularly Rutkowska, 2013: 117–130), and, where relevant, with the practice and views of early modern theoreticians and lexicographers.

8.2.1 and English medieval manuscripts generally observed the principle of the complementary distribution of and , established earlier on the continent, according to which these graphemes could correspond to both the vowel /u/ and the consonant /v/ but was used word-initially and word-medially (see e.g., Scragg, 1974: 14; Salmon, 1999: 39). This old rule is followed exceptionlessly in the editions of The Schoole published between 1557 and 1621. In the editions printed between 1626 and 1635, the distribution of the graphemes and depends on the typeface. In 1626, the passages in the Roman typeface are set according to the modern principle, where functions as a vocalic and as a consonantal, with only one exception (euening). In the same edition, the compositor(s) setting the text in blackletter usually observed the medieval complementary distribution rule, but not consistently, allowing for several instances of spellings such as unto, up, utterance, us, upon, heavenly, and deliver. It also contains the form uertues, which is certainly a typo. In 1630, the confusion between the distribution rules is avoided: the old rule is observed in blackletter and



Distribution of graphemes 

 169

the modern one in the Roman typeface, without a single exception. The 1635 edition displays the same arrangement, but this time a few exceptions are allowed, namely ungentlenesse, us, unfainedly, and up, where the new principle sneaks into some passages in blackletter. Eventually, in 1640 and all the subsequent editions, and are distributed in the modern, contrastive way. This seems rather late, as according to OED (s. v. “U, n.1”), the modern distribution had become established by 1630. An analogical change in the distribution of the graphemes can be noticed in the KS editions, with those published between 1506 and 1631 following the old principle, and the last edition, of 1656, the new one. However, single exceptions to the old rule are recorded already in the earliest editions (see Rutkowska, 2013: 118–119 for details). The remarks on the employment of and made above concern lower-case letters. In both the KS and The Schoole, no functional difference is made between the capital versions of these graphemes. In blackletter, the same -like shape corresponds to the vowel /u/ and the consonant /v/, for example in Unto, Upon and Up as well as Uice, Uertue and Uicars. In the relatively infrequent passages in the Roman typeface, the only words recorded are those starting with the consonantal, a -like character (e.g., Vertue and Verdict), so no conclusions can be drawn on the potential functional differentiation.

8.2.2 and In England, the first attempts to replace the grapheme with where it corresponded to the consonant /dʒ/ go back to the late sixteenth century, but it became generally established after 1630 (OED, s. v. “J, n.”). This replacement can also be traced in The Schoole editions. No occurrence of the grapheme can be found in those published between 1557 and 1621. In 1626, word-initially, eighteen tokens of lower-case are recorded in jangle, jewell, joy, joyfull, judge, judgements, judging, just, justice, and justly, printed in blackletter, as well as one upper-case token in the Roman type in Jacobs. However, not all the tokens of the relevant lexemes are spelt in the modern way, as this edition contains also the variant forms ioyfull, iudge, iudgement(s) and iust in blackletter, lower-case (five tokens), Iudges and Iust in blackletter, upper-case, as well as one token of Iacobs in upper-case, in the Roman typeface. Word-medially, , in all the words where it corresponds to /dʒ/ in the previous editions, is replaced by in 1626 (i.e., Majesty, reject, rejoyce, subjects, and vnjust, all in blackletter). Surprisingly, in the following edition (1630) one can see a switch to the old system, without , apart from one instance of Jacobs in the Roman typeface. By contrast, in 1635 the modern distribution of is in place, except when a word begins with a capital letter. In the latter case, the old variants are used (i.e., Iacobs, Iudge(s), and Iust). In the 1640 edition, is fully established word-initially when a word starts with a lower-case letter, and for the capitals, the use depends on the typeface, with

170 

 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

Iudge(s), Iust and Iustice in blackletter, and Jacobs in the Roman typeface. The only difference between 1640 and 1660 is that in the latter Iacobs (in the Roman typeface) is also spelt in the old way. In the last three editions (1670-1687), the modern spelling is the standard, except when the capital occurs in blackletter (Iust, Iudgements, Iudg, Iudges, Iustice), which simply does not seem to have a separate character for . By comparison, in the KS, is recorded solely in the last edition (1656), in journey, joynt and judg(e)ment, printed in the Roman typeface. This grapheme is not employed at all to refer to /dʒ/ in blackletter, even in lower-case. Nevertheless, in the editions issued in 1506, 1528, 1580-1585, and 1604–1618, it is occasionally used as a final allograph of in Roman numerals (e.g., iiij and xij). The absence of in 1656 may have resulted from the lack of a separate character for it in blackletter in the printing house which issued it.

8.2.3 and It is usually claimed that the graphemes and , acting as vocalics in wordmedial position, were used interchangeably and haphazardly by the early printers of books in English (e.g., Blake, 1965: 65, 71; Brengelman, 1980: 349; Salmon, 1999: 28; Nevalainen, 2012: 144). Nevertheless, some studies show that already in early sixteenth-century books, the distribution of and is not as random as has been suggested. More precisely, is regularly used in function words (e.g., this, which, his, with)68 and in content words (Aronoff, 1989: 68–69, 93–94; Rutkowska, 2013: 121–130). 69 Such division can be noticed in the earliest KS editions (1506–1528), but in the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century is gradually replaced by also in content words. Interestingly, him(self), their, and will behave differently from the remaining function words, displaying the spelling patterns characteristic of content words (see Rutkowska, 2013: 123–124 for potential reasons of this differentiation). Consequently, it does not seem surprising that the only function words which still contain in The Schoole edition published in 1557 are will, their, and him(self). In 1593, theyr is the last remnant spelling variant of a function word containing . By contrast, in 1557, is routinely employed word-medially in content words. In 1593 and later editions, however, its use steadily decreases to the benefit of word-medial . By 1626, the sole old-system spellings containing , which cannot be found in PDE, are voyder, lyar, lye(s), obeysance, and tryall. Of these, tryall is replaced by triall in 1630, and voyder is replaced by voider in 1640. In light of these developments, it is quite remarkable that the edition of The

68 Each word in small capitals comprises all the graphemic realizations of a given lexeme. 69 Aronoff believes that this rule applies only to books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, but Rutkowska’s research proves that it was more widespread in the early sixteenth-century printed books.



Distribution of graphemes 

 171

Schoole printed in 1582 by Henry Denham, does not contain any words with medial apart from Physician, Pythagoras, Egypt, and tyrant, all of Greek origin. Unexpectedly, even in those forms where it is standard in PDE (across the morphological boundary), Denham avoids , using, for instance, saieng, plaieng, enuieng, ioifull, and praier (cf. PDE saying, playing, envying, joyful, and prayer, respectively).

8.2.4 Theoreticians’ opinions on the distribution of graphemes The graphemic conventions found in the early printed books replicate, at least to some extent, the patterns common in medieval manuscripts, which are due to continental influences. This certainly applies to the distribution of the graphemes and , as well as to the frequency of word-medially. The latter was originally motivated by graphetic considerations, as (compared to ) increased the legibility of those words where it immediately preceded graphemes such as and (e.g., in him(self), thing, bring, crime, time, and plain). These “received” rules were contested by early modern spelling reformers. For example, John Hart urged his readers to distinguish between and as well as between and , already in his The opening of the unreasonable writing of our inglish toung..., an unpublished pamphlet written in 1551 (Dobson, 1957, I: 69).70 Hart’s endorsement does not seem to have influenced the contemporary printers, as even his own works, Orthographie and Methode, published in 1569 and 1570, respectively, were printed in accordance with the old principles as regards the distribution of and and the absence of . Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that both Hart’s books contain very few instances of word-medial , although they were issued by different printers, Orthographie by William Seres and Methode by Henry Denham. Seres printed the first edition of The Schoole before his cooperation with Hart, whereas Denham issued its second edition over a decade after such cooperation. Perhaps the latter’s views concerning the distribution of the vocalics and affected Denham’s spelling practices, which are characterized by the extremely low number of tokens with word-medial . Later on, Butler (1633: “To the Reader”), explicitly stated the distribution principle according to which and should correspond to consonants and and to vowels. The new rule is observed already in the book in which he expressed this opinion, printed by William Turner. Butler’s recommendation seems to have become authoritative because a general change in spelling practices soon occurred in printing houses. It is also recorded in an edition of Coote’s handbook as well as an edition of Cockeram’s dictionary, both published in 1637.

70 According to Dobson, Hart’s opinion is the earliest record of this recommendation in English.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

8.3 Indication of vowel length This section examines the three main methods which early modern printers employed in the documents under consideration for indicating long vowels. These include doubling the vocalic corresponding to the relevant vowel, adding the final , and the combination of both solutions. Attention is also paid to the use of the digraph , an aspect relevant both to vowel length and to qualitative differentiation between vowels. The functional significance of is complex, due to both qualitative considerations and later quantitative modifications, that is, mainly the shortening of the vowel (e.g., bread, head, wealth, health etc.); therefore, for clarity of the findings, the lexemes with the shortened vowel are not taken into account here. Also other lexemes with shortened vowels are not examined here (e.g., book, good and love). Nearly all the words analyzed in this section are monosyllabic, with few exceptions. Singular forms are taken into account with regard to nouns, and unmarked forms with regard to verbs. Also, only native words are considered; loanwords are excluded because the spelling patterns displayed by them might be at least partly obscured by foreign orthographic influences. Some other groups of words excluded from the analysis are those ending in /r/ and in consonant clusters, due to the complex histories of the vowels in such phonotactic contexts (often associated with shortening), as well as words ending in /v/, /s/ and /z/ (e.g., leave, prove, house, and choose) because they do not show variation and are consistently spelt with the final (with few exceptions). The analysis focuses on the spellings of the lexemes containing the reflexes of the Middle English vowels /eː/, /ɛː/, /oː/ and /ɔː/, that is, those which are generally considered to have undergone the so called Great Vowel Shift (henceforth GVS, see for instance Lass, 1999: 72–73). Those words in which the vowel derives from ME /aː/ (e.g., make, name, same, and wipe) are spelt consistently with the final in all The Schoole editions, so they do not provide evidence relevant to a comparative study. Also the lexemes containing the reflexes of ME /iː/ (e.g., life, time, and pride), as well as the reflexes of ME /uː/ (e.g., about, out, and without) do not show sufficient spelling variation and modification with regard to vowel length indication (though they often display the variation between and ), to allow a quantitative comparative study. Similarly to the previous section, the findings concerning vowel length indication obtained on the basis of The Schoole editions are confronted with, on the one hand, the results of the study on the KS (see Rutkowska, 2013: 141–161) and, on the other hand, with the opinions of early modern language authorities.



 173

Indication of vowel length 

8.3.1 Early Modern English /iː/ reflecting Middle English /eː/ Table 17 and Figure 16 present the ways of indicating vowel length in words ending in a closed syllable,71 with the stem vowel originating in Middle English /eː/, which developed into /iː/ before 1500 (Dobson, 1957, II: 651). The words whose spellings are considered here include deed (n), deem (v), feed (v), feel (v), heed (n), indeed (adv), keep (v), meek (adj), meet (v), meet (adj), need (n), need (v), peep (v), queen (n), seed (n), seek (v), seem (v), sheep (n), sleep (n), sleep (v), speech (n), speed (n), street (n), sweep (v), sweet (adj), and weed (v), as well as been, feet, and teeth, which comprise the past participle of the verb be and the plural forms of the nouns foot and tooth, respectively. Most words listed above yield between one and three tokens in each edition. Some lexemes, namely deed (n), feed (v), heed (n), keep (v), and need (n), have 5–10 tokens in most editions. Table 17. Words with /iː/ < ME /eː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication 1557 1582 1593 1621 1626 1630 1635 1640 1660 1670 1677 1687



34 1 2 1

39 34 2

43 35 -

29 42 1

30 44 -

30 44 -

30 44 -

9 63 -

7 66 -

72 -

74 -

72 -

100%

80%

60%



40%

20%

0% 1557

1582

1593

1621

1626

1630

1635

1640

1660

1670

1677

1687

Figure 16. Words with /iː/ < ME /eː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication

71 The capital in all the patterns stands for a single consonantal.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

In the first edition of The Schoole (1557), similarly to the four earliest editions of the KS, the printers indicate the length of the vowel in the stem almost exclusively by adding the final (90% of the tokens).72 By comparison, the pattern is recorded in 99.5–100% of the tokens in the KS in the years 1506–1528, and 93% in 1556. In 1582 and 1593, this method is abandoned in The Schoole; instead, the doubling of the vocalic and the combination of the doubling with the final compete with each other, but the latter slightly prevails, accounting for approximately 55% of the tokens. In contrast, although the share of the spellings decreases sharply between 1570 and 1585 (from 78.5% to 14%), in the KS it remains in use throughout the sixteenth century. During the same period, the number of the spellings in the KS increases from 22% to 73%, and that of the spellings moves from 0% to 13%. In The Schoole, the rivalry between and continues until 1670, when the modern spelling becomes the standard one. Yet, becomes dominant already in the 1620s and the 1630s, approaching 60%, and exceeds 87% and 90% in 1640 and 1660, respectively. In the KS, the pattern is the major method of indicating vowel length between 1600 and 1611 (68–71%), and then drops to 22% in 1618, giving ground to the modern spelling (78%); it regains some importance in 1631 (49%), but is totally ousted by in 1656 (i.e., even earlier than in The Schoole). Apart from the main three spelling patterns, in the 1557, 1582 and 1621 editions of The Schoole, single tokens of speach(e) (in all the three editions) and streate (only in the first edition) are also recorded. In the case of the noun speech, the uncertainty concerning spelling may be due to the influence of the graphemic shape of the semantically related verb speak. In open syllables, the graphemes corresponding to the vowel /iː/, derived from ME /eː/, were subject to different tendencies in content words and in function words. The vowel length in content words, including agree (v), degree (n), flee (v), free (adj), knee (n), see (v), and three (num), is not marked in The Schoole in 17 out of 28 tokens (61%) in 1557 (mostly in see), but in all the remaining editions these lexemes are spelt in the modern way. A lower level of unmarked vowel length, that is, 40% is recorded in the 1556 edition of the KS.73 Nevertheless, in the three earlier KS editions this value is much higher, amounting to 89% in 1506, 71% in 1518, and 73% in 1528; then the popularity of the pattern increases sharply from 60% in 1556 to 80% in 1570, over 90% in 1580–1585, and 100% in 1600.

72 With regard to the KS, the following lexemes are taken into consideration: green (adj), keep (v), meek (adj), meet (v), need (n), need (v), sleep (n), sleep (v), speech (n), heed (n), and sweet (adj) (for more details see Rutkowska, 2013: 143–145). 73 The list of lexemes examined in the KS covers degree (n), flee (v.), free (adj), knee (n), see (v), three (num), and tree (n).



Indication of vowel length 

 175

Table 18. Function words with /iː/ < ME /eː/ in open syllables: distribution of vowel length 1557 1582 1593 1621 1626 1630 1635 1640 1660 1670 1677 1687

140 1

218 18

215 17

217 9

216 11

218 10

223 5

219 6

218 6

220 1

224 -

223 -

In function words full regularization takes more time in The Schoole, but the tendency is clear already in the first edition. Table 18 makes it clear that function words including be (v), he (pro), we (pro), and ye (pro), are almost invariably spelt with a single . The spellings with the pattern account for 0.5–7.6% of the tokens, depending on the edition. The object form of the pronoun thou (pro) (i.e., the(e)), has been excluded from the count because of its unusual frequency in this corpus. In 1557, the accounts for 14.6% of the tokens of thee (7 out of 48), but single instances of such spelling can be found only in 1593, 1621, 1640, and 1660. Apparently, this pronoun follows the pattern of content words, presumably due to avoidance of homography with the definite article the. The spelling of the relevant function words follows an analogical trend in the KS (see Rutkowska, 2013: 146 for more information).

8.3.2 Early Modern English /ɛː/ and /eː/ reflecting Middle English /ɛː/ This subsection examines the graphemic representations of the lexemes which in PDE are spelt with , and in which the vowel goes back to Middle English /ɛː/. They include beat (v), clean (adj), deal (v), each (a, pro), eat (v), heat (v), lead (v), lean (v), mean (adj), mean (n), meat (n), reach (v), read (v), seam (n), speak (v), and teach (v), as well as break (v) and great (adj). During the Early Modern English period, /ɛː/ was raised to /eː/ in these words, but the new pronunciation was accepted in careful speech in the later part of the period (Dobson, 1957, II: 607, 619). In PDE the majority of the words listed above have the vowel /iː/, due to a post-GVS merger with words such as meet and seem (see for instance Lass, 1999: 73), with the exception of break and great, which contain /eɪ/. All the lexemes considered here are represented by close syllables. The only relevant lexeme which ends in an open syllable and contains a vowel originating in ME /ɛː/ is sea, but it does not show spelling variation in The Schoole editions. Table 19 and Figure 17 show the spelling patterns of the relevant lexemes, apart from break and great. In 1557 and 1582, predominates, accounting for 73% and 65% of the tokens, respectively. In the first edition, there are also remnants of the old pattern, but it is recorded only in each (24% of all the tokens), and so is the pattern in 1582 (17.5%). The fact that the latter does not contain any indication of vowel length implies that the vowel in each could have been perceived as short, perhaps because it was followed by a voiceless affricate. As regards single instances

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

of , these concern solely the lexeme clean (adj). The modern pattern, , yields merely one instance in 1557, but it quickly rises in importance, accounting for 16% of the tokens in 1582, and for 65.5% in 1593. There is some variation between and in the years 1621–1660, with the modern spelling prevailing in 1593, losing leadership in 1621, regaining it in 1626 and 1635, showing equal importance as in 1630, and eventually becoming the standard in 1670. Table 19. Words with /ɛː/ or /eː/ < ME /ɛː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication 1557 1582 1593 1621 1626 1630 1635 1640 1660 1670 1677 1687



9 27 1

11 1 41 10

1 19 38

38 23

22 41

31 31

21 42

19 42

19 45

62

61

63

100% 90% 80% 70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20% 10% 0% 1557 1582 1593 1621 1626 1630

1635 1640 1660 1670 1677 1687

Figure 17. Words with /ɛː/ or /eː/ < ME /ɛː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication

In the KS, the relevant lexemes taken into consideration include each (adj and pron), eat (v), heal (v), heat (n), meat (n), speak (v), and teach (v). The first three editions contain nearly exclusively the forms with the pattern, with as a minor pattern in 1518 (4%) and 1528 (10.5%) in heat and meat. In 1556, and are equally frequent; thus, compared to 1557 in The Schoole, the change to the new pattern seems less advanced in this corpus. The spellings dominate in the editions published in the years 1570-1585, staying at the level of 57–59%, which is roughly comparable to 65% found in 1582 in The Schoole. In the same period, approximately 5% of the forms in the KS are spelt . In 1600 and 1604, the shares of and



Indication of vowel length 

 177

remain equal and the old spelling pattern is gone (though single instances of occur until 1611), and between 1611 and 1656 the number of the modern spellings increases from 55% to 98%. In fact, the spellings reach nearly 79% already in the 1618 edition of the KS, which seems early, compared to 70% still in the 1660 edition of The Schoole. The lexeme great acquires the modern graphemic shape already in the second edition of The Schoole (1582), whereas in the 1585 edition of the KS, the form great accounts for almost 94% of the tokens of great and in 1600 it nears 100%, with a single token of greate found. By comparison, break is spelt predominantly as breke until 1580, and then breake until 1656. In The Schoole, in turn, breake is used between 1557 and 1635, and break in the following editions.

8.3.3 Early Modern English /uː/ reflecting Middle English /oː/ In this subsection, lexemes with the pattern in PDE, containing the long vowel /uː/, a reflex of ME /oː/, are considered. The group of (close-syllable) words analyzed here comprises brood (n), doom (n), food (n), mood (n), noon (n), school (n),74 smooth (adj), spoon (n), and soon (adv). Apart from school (13–37 tokens, depending on the edition) and food (9 tokens, except in 1557, where one token is found), these lexemes occur one to two times per edition, so school is definitely overrepresented here. Table 20. Words with /uː/ < ME /oː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication



1557

1582

1593

1621

1626–1635 1640

1660

1670

1677–1687

6 38 -

34 12

23 11

38 12

37 12

35 14

49

50

35 13

In The Schoole, in 1593, the number of tokens decreases considerably (see Table 20), which is due to the split of the running head into two parts (The Schoole on the verso pages and of Vertue on the recto ones), and the consequent drop in the instances of schoole in this edition. The running head is not split in any other edition. Table 20 and Figure 18 indicate that the old pattern is used only in the first edition of The Schoole, in 13.6% of the tokens. In the KS,75 expectedly, the

74 The lexeme school is a loanword from Latin, but since it was present already in early Old English, and seems to have been fully naturalized, I have decided to include it into the count in this study. 75 In Rutkowska (2013: 151–152) the tokens of choose (v), move (v), and prove (v) have also been taken into account, but these have been omitted in the present study.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

pattern prevails in the first three editions, but it gradually decreases in importance throughout the century, from 79% in 1557 to 1.4% in 1600; in 1580 it still accounts for 23.5% of the tokens and in 1585 for 15%, so the lack of this pattern already in the second edition of The Schoole is surprising.

100%

80%

60%



40%

20%

0% 1557

1582

1593

1621

1626

1630

1635

1640

1660

1670

1677

1687

Figure 18. Words with /uː/ < ME /oː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication

The prevails between 1557 and 1660 in The Schoole (i.e., for over one hundred years) accounting for 86.4% in 1557, and between 67.6% and 76% in the editions published in the years 1582–1660. In the KS, this pattern dominates between 1556 and 1631, rising from 55% in 1557 to 85% 1585, but it starts to decrease in 1600, and it is virtually eliminated in 1656 (i.e., earlier than in The Schoole). The cumulative method of vowel length indication is fully replaced by the modern spelling in 1670 in The Schoole, but already between 1582 and 1660 it accounts for 24%–27% of the tokens. By comparison, in the KS, single instances of the modern pattern are recorded already in 1506 and 1518, then it is dropped for eighty years, to reappear in 1600; between 1600 and 1631, it covers 20–32% tokens, with the exception of 1618, where it reaches as much as 48%; finally, it replaces almost entirely, with 98.5%, in the final edition. Table 21. Spelling patterns in do: distribution 1557 1582 1593 1621 1626 1630 1635 1640 1660 1670 1677 1687 do doo doe

27 4

43 -

2 36 5

4 39

4 41

22 24

3 44

10 34

9 38

47 -

46 -

45 -



Indication of vowel length 

 179

100%

80%

60%

doe doo do

40%

20%

0% 1557

1582

1593

1621

1626

1630

1635

1640

1660

1670

1677

1687

Figure 19. Spelling patterns in do: tendencies

There are few words in The Schoole containing /uː/, the reflex of ME /oː/, in an open syllable. They include do (v), too (adv, always spelt too), and two (num, spelt twoo and two in 1557 and two elsewhere). Among these, only the lexeme do is sufficiently common in the corpus to merit a separate comment. As can be understood from Table 21 and Figure 19, do is the dominant form in the first edition, covering 87% of the tokens. In 1582 and 1593 it is replaced with doo, which, in the former, is used by Henry Denham with surprising consistency (100% of the tokens). In 1621 and 1626 doe takes over the leadership among the do forms, accounting for approximately 91% of the tokens. In 1630 do becomes current again, with 47.8%, but between 1635, 1640 and 1660 doe retakes the lead, with 94%, 77%, and 81%, respectively. In 1670 and the remaining two editions do has the modern spelling. In the KS, the modern variant prevails in most editions and, surprisingly, it is used most consistently in the earliest versions of the book, especially in de Worde’s edition of 1528, where it is the only spelling of do, but also in the other editions published in the years 1506–1570, never dropping below 97% of the tokens. In 1580 and 1585, do is overtaken by doo, which yields 48% and 59% of the tokens, respectively. Interestingly, the printer of these two editions was probably John Charlewood (who also issued the 1593 version of The Schoole); this can be responsible for the popularity of doo in all the three editions. The modern variant is, again, used nearly exclusively between 1600 and 1611 (91–94%) in the KS, but its share drops in 1618, to the benefit of doe, which accounts for 55% of the tokens in this edition and 95% in 1631. In the final edition of the KS, do covers over 79%, and doe nearly 21%. In view of the high status of the modern variant in the 1656 KS edition, one may wonder why there are still so many instances of doe (over 80%) in 1660 in The Schoole. Perhaps the choice of the prevailing variant was determined by the fact that the latter edition was issued by Flesher, the printer of all The Schoole editions in the years 1626–1660, who could have been simply accustomed to this spelling.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

8.3.4 Early Modern English /ɔː/ and /oː/ reflecting Middle English /ɔː/ The lexemes containing the reflexes of ME /ɔː/ recorded in The Schoole include abroad (adv), bone (n), cloth (n), hope (n), go (v), nose (n), oath (n), so (adv and conj), sloth (n), stone (n), stroke (n), and yoke (n). In the majority of these words, the vowel was raised to /oː/ in the sixteenth century, or at the latest, before 1650 (Lass, 1999: 85, 94–95), and started to be represented by the spelling , modeled on the digraph (Wełna, 1978: 219). The change did not affect abroad (adv) and cloth (n), where the vowel remained mid-open (Wełna, 1978: 219). In bone (n), hope (n), nose (n), and stone (n), the spelling pattern is the only one employed in The Schoole editions and is the standard one in PDE. The first edition does not contain a single token of . The patterns and are first recorded in the 1582 edition, in the forms abroad and abroade. The former remains the main variant of the lexeme abroad (adv) throughout The Schoole editions, but the spelling with the final is also found in 1640 and 1660. No other lexemes are spelt with the digraph in the sixteenth-century editions. The situation changes in 1621, where the forms sloath and stroake, replace the previously used sloth (slouthe in 1557) and stroke, representing sloth (n) and stroke (n), respectively, but the new forms continue to alternate with the old ones in the following editions.76 In 1621 and later editions, can be found also in cloath, sloathfull, and oathes, alternating with ; however, these forms cannot be treated as evidence of vowel length indication because the vowel in cloth underwent shortening, slothful (adj) ends in a derivational suffix containing a short vowel, and oathes, representing the plural form of oath (n), ends in an inflectional suffix. The digraph is also recorded in board (for the noun board) in 1626 and the following editions, alternating with boord (up to 1660), and in yoak (for the noun yoke) in 1670 and in 1687, as well as in the gerund form cloathing (of the verb clothe) in the years 1670–1687. In the KS editions, the digraph appears in 1585 for the first time in the context which can be interpreted as likely to indicate vowel length (cf. 1582 among The Schoole);77 it is recorded in broade (beside the earlier form brode), representing broad (adj), spelt exclusively as broad in the seventeenth-century editions. Between 1600 and 1656, it can also be found in throat(e) and smoak(e), the representations of the lexemes throat (n) and smoke (n), respectively. These three lexemes are represented by altogether 20–22 tokens, depending on the edition. In 1600 and 1604, the old pattern still accounts for some 5% of the tokens, for 52–55%, and for 40–43%. In 1611, the old pattern is not recorded any more, and starts

76 They yield only single tokens, so no percentages are provided here. 77 See Rutkowska (2013: 160) for the information concerning earlier (and later) occurrences in polysyllabic words.



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to prevail (52%). Finally, between 1618 and 1656, the share of drops from 19% to 9.5%, and that of rises from 81% to 90.5%. In The Schoole, two lexemes with the reflexes of ME /ɔː/ are represented by open syllables, i.e., so (always with the modern spelling) and go. The lexeme go (yielding six tokens) is spelt in the modern way already in the first and second editions of The Schoole. However, in 1593, goe takes over and remains the main spelling of go between 1621 and 1660, with only single instances of go in 1621 and 1640. In 1670 and the remaining editions, go regains its position as the only exponent of go (the forms with inflectional endings are not counted here). By comparison, in the first edition of the KS (1506), the spelling go accounts for 88% of the tokens, compared to 12% reserved for goo, a form which does not emerge in The Schoole editions at all. In the years 1518–1556, go is the only spelling, but between 1570 and 1585, the share of go falls from 93% to 60%, with goe rising in importance. Then, go regains the main position in the years 1600–1611, with 95–98% of the tokens, the goe tokens increase from 47% to 79% from 1618 to 1631, and finally go covers 57% of the tokens in 1656 (see Rutkowska, 2013: 158–159 for the relevant tables and diagrams). Although the corpus of The Schoole editions is too small to offer sufficient information on the tendencies concerning the spelling patterns in the word groups examined in this subsection, some findings of Rutkowska (2013: 158–160) seem confirmed here; that is, the dominance of go in the sixteenth century, and the temporary rise in importance of the variant goe in the 1630s.

8.3.5 Indication of vowel length in The Schoole editions: summary of changes A comparison of the changes affecting the sets of spelling patterns within the variables considered in this section shows that the old spelling pattern 78 is still strong in the first edition of The Schoole in the group of closed-syllable lexemes which contain the vowel /iː/, originating in ME /eː/ (see Figure 16), and less so in the lexemes containing the reflexes of ME /ɛː/ and /oː/ (Figures 17 and 18). The cumulative patterns, including both vocalic doubling and the final , and the ones coincide for a few decades in lexemes with high vowels (originating in ME mid-close ones), but in 1670 the modern spellings are already regular in three out of four groups of words considered here in detail. The digraph is already well established in the first edition of The Schoole, but the corresponding digraph starts to be used systematically as late as 1621, and is not yet stabilized in 1687, affecting the level of spelling regularization of the group of lexemes containing the reflexes of ME /ɔː/.

78 The capital stands for a single vocalic, and for a double one.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

In open-syllable words, containing /iː/, a systematic orthographic differentiation between function words (spelt with a simple vocalic) and content words (with a double vocalic) is visible already in the second edition. As regards the lexemes containing back vowels in open syllables, both the types and tokens are few, and no orthographic differentiation of this kind can be noticed. In the case of do, vowel length is indicated by doubling in the 1580s–1590s, and by the addition of the final in the seventeenth century, before 1670. The final is also employed to emphasize the length of the vowel in go in the years 1593–1660. In 1670 and subsequently, however, both lexemes are spelt in the modern way, unmarked in respect of vowel length. In 1670 and in the later editions (as in PDE), the patterns and are mostly reserved for the lexemes in which corresponds to a diphthong, e.g. knife, rise, thine, make, name, same, as well as those ending in /z/ or /v/ (e.g., leave, cheese, these). The spelling of particular long vowels as well as particular lexemes (and groups of lexemes) seems to have become regularized by different dates. Sometimes, the house styles of some printers (e.g., Denham’s consistent spelling of do as doo) and the avoidance of homography (e.g., the spelling of the function words the and thee) may have played a role. Despite a few minor differences concerning the exact time of the adoption of particular spelling patterns, the findings reported in this section generally confirm those formulated in Rutkowska (2013: 141–161), but thanks to the time span extending beyond the 1650s, the present corpus provides also information on further developments in the English orthographic system.

8.3.6 Theoreticians’ opinions on the vowel length indication The convention of doubling the vocalic to mark a long vowel goes back to the fourteenth century (Mossé, 1952: 12; Fisiak, 2004: 19). Also, the final was a usual sight in medieval manuscripts. However, although the latter method is very common in early printed books, the former was apparently neglected by the early printers since it is rare in books published in the first half of the sixteenth century. The first surviving explicit recommendations of the use of these two methods for marking vowel length seem to be John Rastell’s remarks published in c. 1530 (see Salmon, 1989: 297).79 Rastell, a lawyer and printer, recommends the spellings flee, knee, see, bleed, breed, seek, speed, spleen, week and ween,80 in the words where the vowel

79 Brengelman (1980: 347) credits Levins, Mulcaster, and Coote with the first prescriptions of the use of final to mark vowel length, and Scragg (1974: 61, 79) attributes it to Mulcaster. 80 All these and the following examples occur in the facsimile of two pages from Rastell’s book made available in Salmon (1989: 300–301).



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originates in ME /eː/ (both open and closed syllables), but has also bee beside be ‘be’, wee beside we ‘we’, so he does not consistently distinguish orthographically between content and function words.81 The revival of the pattern and the support for the employment in open syllables (which is already a variant covering one fourth of tokens in the KS editions of 1518 and 1528) could have had some impact on printers, but this is difficult to assess on the basis of the corpora taken into consideration in this study because the first editions examined here, following Rastell’s publication, come from as late as 1556 and 1557. In fact, Huloet (1552) still uses predominantly the old and patterns, which means that the revived rule of vocalic doubling still might not have been very widespread in the early 1550s. Yet, the second edition of this dictionary, Huloet and Higgins (1572), has in green, keep, meek, meet, and heed, and in book, cook, look, and soon, but is recorded in both editions of this dictionary in moon, noon, and root, which suggests that the cumulative spelling method started to be used earlier in the group of words containing the reflexes of ME /oː/ than in those with ME /eː/. This correlates with the findings in The Schoole and the KS, but the process seems to be more advanced in both Huloet (1552) and Huloet and Higgins (1572). So does the spread of in open-syllable content words, for instance in degree, knee, three, and tree (free and see start to follow this pattern in the second edition). Such spellings are common in normative writings from the second half of the sixteenth century. The doubling of the vocalic is also occasionally recorded in function words (bee, hee, wee) in Hart (1569, 1570), Laneham (1575), Bullokar (1580b), Coote (1596), Evans (1621), and regular in Hodges (1644, 1649, and 1653) and Wharton (1654). Huloet and Higgins (1572) has wee and yee as headwords (also numerous instances of hee, mee, shee, and thee in definitions and examples). The form thee, which follows the spelling tendencies of content words, is recorded already in Huloet (1552). Later, Coles (1674: 15) lists both single and double variants of be and me, but provides only the modern spelling for we. Nonetheless, although the spelling of in function words is quite widespread in normative writings, apart from thee (temporarily also hee, wee, and yee), these do not catch much ground in the editions of The Schoole and of the KS. Dobson (1957, I: 44) reports that, in the mid-sixteenth century, John Cheke prescribes the use of double vocalics to indicate vowel length but employs both this and the cumulative method in his writings. In contrast, his contemporary Thomas Smith proscribes the use of silent letter and recommends diacritics (Dobson, 1957, I: 51). Surprisingly, although in his earlier unpublished manuscript (1551) he claims that the final should be abolished (Dobson, 1957, I: 63, 69), a few years later Hart (1569: 33r) assures his readers that it should be preserved, and seems to favour the in his own books (e.g., keepe, neede, schoole, soone). In the group of words with the reflexes of ME /eː/ and /oː/, the cumulative patterns, and

81 Admittedly, he employs mostly be and we, and only single instances of bee and wee.

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, predominate in a number of theoreticians’ writings in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (e.g., Bullokar, 1580a and 1580b; Clement, 1587; Puttenham, 1589/1968; Coote, 1596; Gil, 1619; Evans, 1621; and Prat, 1622, with occasional resort to and .82 Yet, the use of is not universally appreciated as a method of vowel length indication. Mulcaster (1582: 118–119) is its declared adversary, but allows it in inflectional forms (which he calls deriuatiues), for instance, tre but trees, agre but agrees, and se but sees. Instead, he recommends old-system spellings such as quene, sene, wene, betwene. As regards the words containing the reflexes of ME /ɛː/, Rastell (c. 1530) prescribes the spellings mede ‘meadow’, rede ‘read’, fle ‘flay, skin’, se ‘sea’ and never employs , so he cannot be held responsible for the high increase of spellings containing this digraph in the mid-sixteenth century. According to Scragg (1974: 67), the rise in the popularity of , a convention inherited from Anglo-Norman scribes, was due to a transfer of scriveners’ orthographic practices to printing houses during the sixteenth century. However, it is worth emphasizing that great and greate are the variants found already in the early sixteenth-century editions of the KS; for instance, great covers 41%, and greate 11%, of the tokens in 1506, and great covers 96% in 1518. The extension of these patterns to other lexemes could be then interpreted as part of lexical diffusion (see also Taavitsainen, 2000: 144; Nevalainen, 2012: 146; Rutkowska, 2013: 167). This diffusion is likely to have been enhanced by the presence of relevant spellings in works of reference, such as dictionaries. For example, in Huloet (1552) as well as in Huloet and Higgins (1572), , the dominant spelling of words containing ME /ɛː/ from the mid-sixteenth century until the early seventeenth century in the KS and The Schoole, is already regular in eat, heat, meat, speak, and teach, which could have supported the spread of the pattern in the books printed in the 1580s. This cumulative pattern is also used by Hart (1569) in mean, read, speak, and weak (but not in each, spelt eche), by Puttenham (1589/1968) in break, eat, heal, heat, and meat, but not in great (spelt great), teach (teach) and each (each, eche, and ech), and by Cawdrey (1604, 1609, 1613, and 1617) in heat, meat, and break. Although Mulcaster (1582) appreciates the old pattern for marking the vowel originating in ME /eː/, he is simultaneously the first authority to systematically promote the modern spelling patterns and for lexemes such as, for example, break, deal, eat, mean, meat, read, sea, speak, teach (but not each, spelt mostly ech), book, cook, doom, moon, smooth and soon. Nonetheless, in later normative writings, the variants with and still often concide, and predominates in, for instance, Clement (1587), Puttenham (1589/1968), Coote (1596), and Gil (1619). Eventually, by the 1640s, the consistent modern distribution

82 The lexemes blood and flood have more spelling variants but they are irrelevant here, because they were not recorded in The Schoole editions (for more information see Rutkowska, 2013: 154–156, 161, 165–166).



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of the patterns , , and becomes the norm in Daines (1640), Hodges (1644, 1649, 1653), and Wharton (1654), though later writers still use older patterns, at least occasionally (for instance, Ellis (1660) has both book and booke). Among the lexemes subject to orthographic experiments aiming at vowel length indication, do merits a separate comment due to its frequency and the range of variants. In the sixteenth-century editions of The Schoole and the KS, until 1580, it is almost uniformly spelt in the modern way. Then, in the 1580s and 1590s, the variant doo is the major or even the only spelling of do (Denham’s 1582 edition of The Schoole). As regards normative writings, doo is recorded (in variation with do and doe) a few years earlier, in Huloet and Higgins (1572), and it is the only spelling of do in Laneham (1575). Puttenham (1589/1968) favors doo, but employs also doe, and occasionally do. On the whole, doo is not a widespread variant. Though he also publishes his work in in the 1580s, Mulcaster (1582) uses do consistently (without a single instance of doo or doe). Additionally, Baret (1574) employs a rather exotic variant dooe with vocalic doubling combined with the final , but his usage does not seem to have had any impact on other writers. In the early seventeenth century, do regains ground in the editions examined here, only to cede it to doe in the 1620s and 1630s. This variant was already regular in Hart (1569 and 1570) and Bullokar (1580b), though they occasionally resort to do. Clement (1587) uses both do and doe, without clear preference. In Coote (1596), there are slightly more tokens of do than of doe. Yet, Coote’s original orthography is modified by the publisher of later editions, and in the 1655 edition of this handbook only do is used. As regards lexicographers, Cawdrey (1604) has doe, doo, and do but retains just doe in the remaining editions of his dictionary (1609, 1613, and 1617); Cockeram uses doe between 1623 and 1639 but switches to do in 1655. Eventually, between 1656 and 1670, the modern spelling starts to dominate again in the KS and The Schoole, respectively. The spelling of the words containing the reflexes of ME /ɔː/ is not uniform across lexemes (compare, for instance, coat and bone), so it is not surprising that even in the last editions of the books examined in this study, there is some diversity. As for the views of theoreticians and lexicographers, Huloet (1552) as well as Huloet and Higgins (1572) have othe, smoke, stroke, yoke. They have spelling variation in some other lexemes (e.g., abrode ~ abroade, bote ~ boate, brode ~ broade, throate ~ throate). Mulcaster (1582: 118) treats the digraph as superfluous, because to him “the qualifying e” sufficiently indicates the length of the preceding vowel (e.g., in bone, bote, cote, and mone). Nonetheless, it is recorded in Clement (1587, e.g., in abroade, throate) and Puttenham (1589/1968, e.g., in abroad, broad, boast, and smoake). Coote (1596) recommends such spellings (e.g., abroad, broad, boat, cloathes, coate, goat and oath). Also the seventeenth-century orthoepists, lexicographers and grammarians use regularly (e.g., Cawdrey, 1604–1617; Gil, 1619; Evans, 1621; Cockeram, 1623, 1626, 1639, 1655; Hodges, 1644; and Wharton, 1654), mainly in the lexemes abroad, boat, broad, coat, goat, load, and throat. Cockeram (1623) has also in smoke, yoke (used as a verb). His spellings smoake and yoake, recorded in the editions between

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1623 and 1639, are changed to smoak ~ smoke and yoke in 1655, and smoke and yoke in 1670. Variation continues also in later authors; for example, Coles (1674) lists the spellings smoak and stroak, but yoke, whereas Ellis (1680) has smoak, but stroke, yoke. Some of the above mentioned authorities could have influenced the printers of the editions under consideration as regards the increase of spellings with , but the level of variation in this set of lexemes among the theoreticians precludes any evidence of strong and concerted influence on the preferences for particular forms among contemporary printers.

8.4 Conclusions Several conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the results of the present study. First of all, a few stages can be identified in the process of orthographic regularization in the corpus under analysis. The most spectacular changes are visible between the 1557 edition and the 1582 one, both in the distribution of the vocalics and and in the indication of vowel length, consisting in the replacement of (the remnants of) the old system pattern with the new, one. Two other important dates are 1640 and 1670. The former corresponds to the establishment of the graphemic distributional principles without exception, and the latter to the full installation of most modern vowel length indication patterns, at least in The Schoole editions. Salmon (1999: 32) refers to the year 1660 as “marked by the establishment of an orthography which was, in most respects, that of the twentieth century”. The findings of the present study suggest that this boundary should perhaps be moved to the year 1670. One can argue, obviously, that the relatively small size of the corpus limits the possibility of generalizing the results, but in fact the findings confirm the main trends identified by Rutkowska (2013) for the KS, a much larger corpus, despite some time differences concerning the settlement of particular features. As concerns the analysis of particular graphemes, the difference in typeface as well as the difference between lower-case and upper-case letters should be taken into consideration in assessing the findings concerning graphemic usage in early modern books printed in English. Also, the distribution of the graphemes and as well as and in the corpus under examination casts some doubt on the dating of The Schoole editions allegedly published in 1626, 1630, and 1635. My findings suggest that the 1626 edition could have been printed after 1630 (and possibly also after 1635). Thus, the analysis of orthographic features can affect the dating of particular documents in cases where the date has been reconstructed, and not explicitly stated in the colophon. With regard to vowel length indication, the methods (adding the final , vocalic doubling, and both) and speed of the regularization process depend on individual variables (i.e., the groups of lexemes to which a given word belongs) and the division into these groups is connected with the ME vowel in the stem of a word. With hindsight, it seems that at least some spelling patterns established in the early

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modern period are used to avoid homography, so they observe the heterographic, rather than phonemic (or phonological), principle.83 For example, meet, containing a reflex of ME /eː/ is spelt differently from meat, containing a vowel derived from ME /ɛː/. However, the fact that printers spell meat, sea and meet, see, differently, and do not use any orthographic distinction between the words such as break, great and meat, sea, on the one hand, and theoreticians do not (yet) suggest the this should be changed, implies that neither the diphthongization (of the reflex of ME /ɛː/) nor the merger (of ME /eː/ and ME /iː/) had been completed by that time.84 Consequently, these spellings are likely to have coincided with the phonemic principle at the time when they were established – they ensured the orthographic differentiation between mid-close and mid-open vowels. The “house styles” of particular printing houses are difficult to identify on the basis of The Schoole corpus but, at least in one edition, this turns out to be possible. Henry Denham, the printer of the 1582 version of The Schoole, is surprisingly consistent with regard to the spelling of do (always doo) and the use of word-medial vocalic . The combination of these two features cannot be easily correlated with the recommendations or usage of any particular language authority. In turn, the spread of the digraph from abroad to other lexemes in the 1621 and subsequent editions of The Schoole could have been triggered or at least supported by the lexicographers and other authors of publications on language usage. On the whole, some more or less exact correlations between the recommendations of theoreticians and the practice of the printers can be made, but it is difficult to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. For example, a few years after Butler (1633) prescribed the modern distribution of and , this principle started to be generally observed, but the change was not sudden, and rather clear signs of it can be identified already in the 1626 edition of The Schoole. It is also debatable to what extent the new spelling patterns and usages were the ideas of theoreticians and to what extent they were a product of printers’ house styles, or else still, of the negotiations between theoreticians and printers during the publication process. Hence, the question of the extent to which theoreticians, on the one hand, and printers, on the other, have impacted on the regularization of Early Modern English spelling is likely to remain a chicken-and-egg problem for quite a long time. Definitely, more studies based on other sets of editions of early printed books correlated with investigations into language authorities’ views are needed to refine our overall knowledge concerning the stages and speed of the orthographic regularization and standardization in English.

83 See Rutkowska (2012) and Rutkowska and Rössler (2012) for a discussion on the principles behind the orthographic rules in the English orthographic system. 84 At least until the 1670s, when the relevant orthographic rules had already been largely settled; Coles (1674: 13, 15) provides the forms meet and meat as well as reed and read as sets of homophones.

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List of abbreviations adj adjective adv adverb C consonantal conj conjunction EEBO Early English Books Online ESTC English Short Title Catalogue GVS Great Vowel Shift KS Kalender of Shepherdes ME Middle English n noun num numeral OED The Oxford English Dictionary Online PDE present-day English pro pronoun STC Jackson et al. (1976) v verb V vocalic Wing Wing (1982–1998)

References Primary sources The Schoole editions

Seager (Segar) [Francis]. 1557. The schoole of Uertue, and booke of good Nourture for chyldren, and youth to learne theyr dutie by. Newely perused, corrected, and augmented by the fyrst Auctour. F. S With a briefe declaration of the dutie of eche degree. London: Wyllyam Seares. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. 1582. The Schoole of Vertue and booke of good nurture, teaching children and youth their duties. Newlie pervsed, corrected, and augmented. Herevnto is added a briefe declaration of the dutie of ech degree: Also certaine Praiers and Graces compiled by R. C. London: H. Denham. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. 1593. The Schoole of Vertue, & Booke of good Nurture, teaching children & youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected and augmented… London: [John Charlewood for] Richard Iones. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. 1621. The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of good Nurture teaching Children and Youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected and amended… London: G. E. for T. P. and I. W. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [1626]. The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of good Nurture, teaching Children and Youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected, and amended… London: M. Flesher for Robert Bird.

References 

 189

Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [c. 1630]. The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of good Nurture, teaching Children and Youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected, and amended… London: M. Flesher for Robert Bird. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [c. 1635]. The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of good Nurture, teaching Children and Youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected, and amended… London: M. Flesher for Robert Bird. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [c. 1640]. [The Schoole of Vertue. London: M. Flesher for Robert Bird]. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [c. 1660]. The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of good Nurture, teaching Children and Youth their duties. Newly perused, corrected, and amended… London: M. Flesher for Iohn Wright. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. [1670]. The School of Vertue, and Book of good Nurture, teaching Children and Youth their Duties. Newly perused, corrected and amended… London: E. Crowch for J. Wright. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. 1677. The School of Vertue. And Book of Good Nurture; teaching Children and Youth their Duties. Newly perused, corrected and amended… London: for J. Wright. Seager (Segar) [Francis] and Robert Crowley. 1687. The School of Vertue. And Book of Good Nurture; teaching Children and Youth their Duties. Newly perused, corrected and amended… London: for M. W. and George Conyers.

The Kalender of Shepherdes editions (in chronological order)

1506 Here begynneth the Kalender of Shepherdes. London: Richard Pynson. [1518] Here begynneth the Kalender of Shepardes. [London: Julian Notary] 1528 The kalēder of shepeherdes. London: Wynkyn de Worde. 1556 Here begynneth the kalender of Shepardes. Newely augmented and corrected. London: William Powell. [c. 1570] The Shepardes Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepardes Newly Augmented and Corrected. London: Thomas Este for John Wally. [c. 1580] [The Shepardes Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepardes Newly Augmented and Corrected] London: [John Charlewood for] John Wally. [c. 1585] Heere beginneth the Kalender of Sheepehards: Newly Augmented and Corrected. London: [John Charlewood and George Robinson for] John Wally. [1600] [The Shepheards Kalender] London: [Valentine Simmes for Thomas Adams]. 1604 The Shepheards Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepheards. Newly augmented and corrected. London: George Elde for Thomas Adams. 1611 The Shepheards Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepheards. Newly augmented and corrected. London: for Thomas Adams. 1618 The Shepheards Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepheards. Newly augmented and corrected. London: for Thomas Adams. 1631 The Shepherds Kalender. Here beginneth the Kalender of Shepherds. Newly augmented and corrected. London: [Eliot’s Court Press] for John Wright. 1656 The Shepheards Kalender. Newly Augmented and Corrected. London: Robert Ibbitson.

Early modern dictionaries

Baret, John. 1574. An ALVEARIE or Triple Dictionarie, in Englishe, Latin, and French... London: Henry Denham. Cawdrey, Robert. 1604. A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true vvriting, and vnderstanding of hard vsuall English wordes... London: I. R. for Edmund Weaver.

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 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books

Cawdrey, Robert. 1609. A Table Alphabeticall, contayning and teaching the true writing and vnderstanding of hard vsuall English wordes... London: T. S. for Edmund Weaver. Cawdrey, Robert. 1613. A Table Alphabeticall, contayning and teaching the true writing and vnderstanding of hard vsuall English words... London: T. S. for Edmund Weaver. Cawdrey, Robert. 1617. A Table Alphabeticall, or the English expositor, containing and teaching the true writing and vnderstanding of hard vsuall English words... London: W. I. for Edmund Weaver. Cockeram, Henry. 1623. The English Dictionarie: Or, An Interpreter of hard English Words. Enabling as well Ladies and Gentlewomen, young Schollers, Clarkes, Merchants, as also Strangers of any Nation, to the vnderstanding of the more difficult..., London: Edmund Weaver. Cockeram, Henry. 1626. The English Dictionarie: Or, An Interpreter of hard English Words..., London: Isaac Jaggard for Edmund Weaver. Cockeram, Henry. 1637. The English Dictionarie: Or, An Interpreter of hard English Words... London: I. H. for Edmund Weaver. Cockeram, Henry. 1639. The English Dictionarie: Or, An Interpreter of hard English Words... London: T. Cotes for Thomas Weaver. Cockeram, Henry. 1655. The English Dictionary: Or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words... London: A. M. for Andrew Crooke. Cockeram, Henry. 1670. The English Dictionary: Or, An Expositor of Hard English Words, Newly Refin’d… London: for W. Miller. Huloet, Richard. 1552. Abcedarium anglico latinum, pro tyrunculis Richardo Huloeto exscriptore. London: William Riddel. Huloet, Richard & John Higgins. 1572. Huloets dictionarie newelye corrected, amended, set in order and enlarged, vvith many names of men, tovvnes, beastes, foules, fishes, trees, shrubbes, herbes, fruites, places, instrumentes &c. And in eche place fit phrases, gathered out of the best Latin authors. Also the Frenche therevnto annexed, by vvhich you may finde the Latin or Frenche, of anye English woorde you will. London: Thomas Marsh.

Early modern grammars, handbooks, and treatises

Bullokar, William. 1580a. A Short Introduction or guiding to print, write, and reade Inglish speech: conferred with the olde printing and writing..., London: Henry Denham. Bullokar, William. 1580b. Bullokars Booke at large, for the Amendment of Orthographie for English speech: wherein, a most perfect supplie is made, for the wantes and double sounde of letters in the olde Orthographie... London: Henry Denham. Butler, Charles. 1633. The English Grammar, or The Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words, in the English tongue. Whereunto is annexed An Index of Words Like and Unlike. Oxford: William Turner, for the Author. Clement, Francis. 1587. The Petie Schole with an English Orthographie, wherin by rules lately prescribed is taught a method to enable both a childe to reade perfectly within one moneth, & also the vnperfect to write English aright.... London: Thomas Vautrollier. Coles, Elisha. 1674. The Compleat English Schoolmaster. Or The Most Natural and Easie Method Of Spelling English. London: for Peter Parker. Coote, Edward. 1596. [The English Schoole-maister] London: Widow Orwin, for Ralph Jackson and Robert Dextar. Coote, Edward. 1637. The English Schoole-Maister... London: for the Company of Stationers. Coote, Edward. 1655. The English School-Master... London: for the Company of Stationers. Daines, Simon. 1640. Orthoepia Anglicana: Or, The First Principal Part of the English Grammar: Teaching The Art of right speaking and pronouncing English, With certaine exact rules of

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Orthography, and rules of spelling... London: Robert Young and Richard Badger for the Company of Stationers. Ellis, Clement. 1660. The Gentile Sinner, or, England’s Brave Gentleman: Characterized In a Letter to a Friend, Both As he is, and as he should be. Oxford: Henry Hall for Edward and John Forrest. Ellis, Tobias. 1680. The English School: Containing, A Catalogue of all the Words in the Bible, beginning with one Syllable and proceeding by degrees to seven, divided and not divided; together with a brief and compleat Table of the most usual and common English Words. London: John Darby, for the Author. Evans, John. 1621. The Palace of profitable Pleasure. Contayning and teaching with ease and delight, whatsoeuer is necessary to bee learned of an English Scholler... London: W. Stansby. Gil, Alexander. 1619. Logonomia Anglica. Qua Gentis Sermo Facilis Addiscitur. London: John Beal. Hart, John. 1569. An Orthographie, conteyning the due order and reason, howe to write or paint thimage of mannes voice, most like to the life or nature. Composed by I. H. Chester Heralt. London: William Seres. Hart, John. 1570. A Methode or comfortable beginning for all vnlearned, whereby they may bee taught to read English, in a very short time, vvith pleasure: So profitable as straunge, put in light, by I. H. Chester Heralt. London: Henry Denham. Hodges, Richard. 1644. A Special Help to Orthographie, or, The true-vvriting of English. Consisting of such Words as are alike in sound, and unlike both in their signification and Writing: As also, Of such Words which are so neer alike in sound, that they are sometimes taken one for another... London: Richard Cotes. Hodges, Richard. 1649. The Plainest Directions for the True-Writing of English... London: William Du-gard for Thomas Euster. Hodges, Richard. 1653. Most Plain Directions for True-Writing... London: William Du-gard for Richard Hodges. Laneham, Robert. 1575. A letter: whearin, part of the entertainment vntoo the Queenz Maiest, at Killingwoorth Castl, in warwik Sheer, in this soomerz Progress, 1575 iz signified: from a freend officer attendant in Coourt, vnto hiz freend a Citizen, and Merchaunt of London. London. Mulcaster, Richard. 1582. The First Part of the Elementarie vvhich Entreateth Chefelie of the right writing of our English tung. London: Vautroullier. Prat, Jos. 1622. The Order of Orthographie: Or, Sixty sixe Rules shortly directing to the true writing, speaking, and pronouncing the English Tongue. London: Augustine Mathews for William Lee. Puttenham, George. 1589/1968. The Arte of English Poesie. Menston: Scholar Press. [accessed on 5 October 2012] [Rastell, John]. [c. 1530]. The boke of the new cardys wh[ich] pleyeng at card[s] one may lerne to know hys lett[ers,] spel & to rede & how one shuld wryte englysh. [London: John Rastell]. Smith, Thomas. 1568. De recta & emendata linguae Anglicae scriptione, dialogus Thoma Smitho equestris ordinis Anglo authore. Paris: Robert Stephan. Wharton, Jeremiah. 1654. The English-Grammar: Or, The Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words in the English-Tongue. Conteining all Rules and Directions necessary to bee known for the judicious Reading, Right-speaking, and Writing thereof... London: William Du-Gard.

Secondary sources

Aronoff, Mark. 1989. The orthographic system of an early English printer: Wynkyn de Worde. Folia Linguistica Historica 8(1–2). 65–97. Blake, Norman Francis. 1965. English versions of Reynard the Fox in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Studies in Philology 62(1). 63–77.

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Brengelman, Frederick. 1980. Orthoepists, printers and the rationalisation of English spelling. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 79. 332–54. Carney, Edward. 1994. A survey of English spelling. London: Routledge. Dobson, Eric John. 1957. English pronunciation 1500–1700. Volumes I–II. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Duff, Edward Gordon. 1906. The printers, stationers and bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535. Cambridge: University Press. Early English Books Online (EEBO) [last accessed on 15 October 2015] English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) [last accessed on 20 December 2015] Fisiak, Jacek. 2004. A short Grammar of Middle English. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. Görlach, Manfred. 2001. Eighteenth-century English. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. de Hamel, Christopher. 1983. Reflexions on the trade in books of hours at Ghent and Bruges. In Joseph Burney Trapp (ed.), Manuscripts in the fifty years after the invention of printing: Some papers read at a colloquium at the Warburg Institute on 12–13 March 1982, 29–33. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London. Horobin, Simon. 2001. The language of the fifteenth-century printed editions of The Canterbury Tales. Anglia 119(2). 249–58. Howard-Hill, Trevor. 2006. Early modern printers and the standardization of English spelling. The Modern Language Review 101. 16–29. Krapp, George Philip. 1909. Modern English: Its growth and present use. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Jackson, William Alexander, Frederic Sutherland Ferguson & Katharine F. Pantzer (eds.), Pollard, Alfred William & Gilbert Richard Redgrave (compilers), (STC). 1976. A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English books printed abroad, 1475-1640, Volume 2: I–Z, 2nd edn. London: Bibliographical Society. Lass, Roger. 1999. Phonology and morphology. In Roger Lass (ed.), Approaches to English historical linguistics, 56–186. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. 1999. Authority in language: Investigating language prescription and standardisation, 3rd edn. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mossé, Fernand. 1952. A handbook of Middle English. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2012. Variable focusing in English spelling between 1400 and 1600. In Susan Baddeley & Anja Voeste (eds.), Orthographies in early modern Europe, 127–166. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Osselton, Noel. 1984. Informal spelling systems in Early Modern English: 1500–1800. In Norman Francis Blake & Charles Jones (eds.), English historical linguistics: Studies in development. (CECTAL Conference Papers Series, no. 3), 123–37. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. Plomer, Henry Robert. 1907. A dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. London: Bibliographical Society. Rutkowska, Hanna. 2005. Selected orthographic features in English editions of the Book of good maners (1487-1507). SELIM 12. 127–142. Rutkowska, Hanna. 2012. Linguistic levels: Orthography. In Alexander Bergs & Laurel J. Brinton (eds.), English historical linguistics: An international handbook, 224–237. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Rutkowska, Hanna. 2013. Orthographic systems in thirteen editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes (1506-1656). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Rutkowska, Hanna & Paul Rössler. 2012. Orthographic variables. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 214–236. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Salmon, Vivian. 1989. John Rastell and the normalization of early sixteenth-century orthography. In Leiv Egil Breivik, Arnoldus Hille & Stig Johansson (eds.), Essays on English language in honour of Bertil Sundby, 289–301. Oslo: Novus Forlag. Salmon, Vivian. 1999. Orthography and punctuation. In Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language. Volume III: 1476-1776, 13–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scragg, Donald G. 1974. A history of English spelling. Manchester: University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma. 2000. Scientific language and spelling standardisation. In Laura Wright (ed.), The development of standard English 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts, 131–154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Oxford English dictionary Online (OED). Oxford University Press [accessed on 3 January 2015] Wełna, Jerzy. 1978. A diachronic grammar of English. Part one: Phonology. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Wełna, Jerzy. 1982. English spelling and pronunciation. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Wing, Donald Goddard (Wing). 1982–1998. Short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America and of English books printed in other countries, 2nd edn. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Gijsbert Rutten

9 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch While the present-day situation of European dialect/standard constellations is often described in terms of diaglossia, it is also argued that this stage of diaglossia only recently developed from a previous period of diglossia. This paper argues that historical sociolinguistic research shows that the supposed historical development from diglossia to diaglossia cannot be found in western European languages such as Dutch, English and German. Instead, the sociolinguistic situation in the Early and Late Modern period should already be considered as diaglossic. The empirical data provided by historical sociolinguistic studies challenge the empirical validity of earlier descriptions of language history, as well as the related theories of standardization. I will substantiate these claims by an analysis of individual variation in the expression of negation in a corpus of Dutch private letters from the Early Modern period. I will argue that standardization is essentially a metalinguistic phenomenon datable to the late eighteenth century, and not an appropriate descriptive label for ongoing processes of norm convergence in the late- and post-medieval period, for which supralocalization is a better term. Keywords: diaglossia, diglossia, standardization, supralocalization, Dutch, negation, individual variation.

9.1 Introduction While the present-day situation of European dialect/standard constellations is often described in terms of diaglossia, it is also argued that this stage of diaglossia only recently developed from a previous period of diglossia (Auer, 2005, 2011; Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011). In this paper, I argue that historical sociolinguistic research shows that the supposed historical development from diglossia to diaglossia cannot be found in western European languages such as Dutch, English and German. Instead, the sociolinguistic situation in the Early and Late Modern period should already be considered as diaglossic. The empirical data provided by historical sociolinguistic studies challenge the empirical validity of earlier descriptions of language history, as well as the related theories of standardization (Sections 9.2 and 9.3). I will substantiate these claims by an analysis of individual variation in the expression of negation in a corpus of Dutch private letters from the Early Modern period (Section 9.4). When discussing the results, I will argue that standardization is essentially a metalinguistic phenomenon datable to the late eighteenth century, and not an appropriate descriptive label for ongoing processes of norm convergence in the © 2016 Gijsbert Rutten This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.



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late- and post-medieval period, for which supralocalization is a better term (Sections 9. 5 and 9. 6). Section 9. 7 is the conclusion.

9.2 Sociolinguistic space past and present Auer (2005) offers a typology of contemporary European dialect/standard constellations. He observes that in many European language areas, dialect/standard diglossia has given way to a situation with intermediate variants located between the standard and base dialects (Auer, 2005: 22). He uses the notion of diaglossia to conceptualize this situation in which the dichotomy implied by the concept of diglossia is replaced by an almost fuzzy continuum of variants which are neither distinctly dialectal nor standard, and which can differ in the extent to which they resemble base dialect forms on the one hand, and standard forms on the other. Such intermediate forms are referred to with the terms diaglossia and diaglossic reportoire instead of perhaps more common terms such as regiolect and regional dialect, because “the implication [of the morpheme -lect] that we are dealing with a separate variety is not necessarily justified” (Auer, 2005: 22). It makes more sense to think of the space between base dialect and standard as a continuum with non-discrete intermediate structures, and with a “good degree of levelling between the base dialects […] which at the same time implies advergence to the standard” (Auer, 2005: 22). In Europe today, Auer continues, diaglossic repertoires are found everywhere, from Norway to Cyprus and from Poland to Spain. As a typological label, diaglossia is not an empirically observable phenomenon, but a concept applied to an analysis of linguistic variants in use. It is a general description of the varietal spectrum available to language users in a specific community at a given place and time. Focusing on the pluricentric Dutch language area, Grondelaers and van Hout (2011) analyze the present-day situation of diaglossia in Belgium and The Netherlands. They argue that the concept of diaglossia indeed captures sociolinguistic space in the present, although it may be the result from very different processes. Dutch in the north (i.e., in The Netherlands) becomes diaglossic due to top-down norm relaxation, which, for example, leads to increasing tolerance towards regional accents. This is usually called destandardization or substandardization (Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011: 210). In the south (i.e., in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), on the other hand, intermediate forms emerge in a process of “endoglossic standardization” (Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011: 222), whereby speakers of different regions adopt similar forms in a bottom-up fashion, while discarding the old, supranational standard, which is perceived as northern and exoglossic. The spread of initially localizable forms to areas where they were not in use before is also called supralocalization or supraregionalization (Milroy, Milroy and Hartley, 1994; Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2006; Hickey, 2012).

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Although Grondelaers and van Hout build on Auer’s model, they propose different diachronies with different time-depths. According to Auer (2005: 23), diaglossia dates back to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Grondelaers and van Hout (2011: 204–205) describe the sociolinguistic situation in Belgium and The Netherlands around 1960 as diglossic, and argue that the change toward diaglossia is an even more recent phenomenon. Auer (2005, 2011) and Grondelaers and van Hout (2011) agree that diaglossia develops from a previous state of diglossia. According to Auer (2005), endoglossic standards arose in Europe from the fourteenth century onward, and made their way into spoken language in the Early and Late Modern period. Grondelaers and van Hout (2011: 202) claim that “a prestige variety” came into existence in The Netherlands in the seventeenth century, “as part of the newly acquired national identity”. These endoglossic standards and prestige varieties are supposed to have stood in a diglossic relation to base dialects. In Belgium, the situation was different, according to Grondelaers and van Hout (2011: 203), as “around 1800 Dutch was no more than a concatenation of dialects […] inappropriate for supra-regional use”. The standard was imported from the north only afterwards. This view of the history of Dutch in Belgium has been called into question in the historical sociolinguistic literature, where it has been argued that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch in the southern Low Countries was a supralocally used written variety not that different from contemporary northern Dutch (Vosters, Rutten and van der Wal, 2010; Vosters et al. 2012). Whether there was a ‘prestige variety’ of Dutch in the south or not, from both Auer (2005, 2011) and Grondelaers and van Hout (2011) it can be inferred that the Early and Late Modern period were characterized by a state of diglossia. In a fairly strict Fergusonian approach, however, standard/dialect situations and societal multilingualism generally are not considered instances of diglossia (Ferguson, 1959; Schiffman, 1998; Hudson, 2002). In the strict sense, diglossia as found, for example, in Switzerland, is register-based and not socially indexed, which means that all language users use the H-variety (H for high) in specific circumstances, for example rituals, and the L-variety (L for low) in other contexts such as informal conversation. This also implies that there is not necessarily a prestige or power difference between H and L. Furthermore, the H-variety typically has no mother tongue-speakers, but is only acquired at a later age, which is one reason why diglossic repertoires are often quite stable over time. For the same reason, when changes to the sociolinguistic situation do occur, L is more likely to displace H. In cases of societal multilingualism, on the other hand, H often correlates with power or prestige and is more likely to displace L. The supposed change from diglossia to diaglossia involves “advergence to the standard” (Auer, 2005: 22), i.e., a development from L towards H, and may lead to dialect loss or loss of L. This would be an atypical result of diglossia. In historical sociolinguistics, it is customary to attach great value to the informal written language of less-privileged people, for example private letters written by farmers, sailors, soldiers and their wives (cf. Elspaß ,2005; Rutten and



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van der Wal, 2014, among many others). If we assume that such texts, dating back to the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and therefore predating the emergence of diaglossia, were written in a diglossic situation, we should be able to decide whether they represent the L or the H variety. In diglossic situations, H is often the only variety used for writing, and it has even been argued that the very introduction of writing and literacy into a speech community constitutes one, if not the main impetus for diglossia to emerge (Coulmas, 2002). From that perspective, the sole fact that the sources investigated by historical sociolinguists are written should qualify them as instances of the H-variety. In addition, the texts usually display many supralocal forms and cannot be considered to be written-down spoken language, as present-day dialects often differ considerably from the language in these sources, being much more easily localizable (cf. Rutten and van der Wal, 2011). At the same time, the language in the sources comprises more localizable elements than contemporary literary and administrative sources, adding significantly to our understanding of geographical variation in the past (Rutten and van der Wal, 2011). On the other hand, the functional distribution of H and L in a diglossic situation typically involves a formality axis, with L being preferred in informal contexts. The focus on private correspondence in historical sociolinguistics testifies to the importance attributed to informal language use, and it has been argued that what we find in such sources is neither the standard language nor a written version of the everyday spoken language of the past, but rather the contemporary informal written language (Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 406). Moreover, many of the historical sociolinguistic databases only exist because informal conversations between family and friends were not possible anymore due to migration, and thus had to be continued in writing; this applies, for example, to the emigrant letters studied by Elspaß (2005) and to the so-called sailing letters studied by Rutten and van der Wal (2014). From the functional perspective, therefore, the sources may be qualified as L, but as a form of L that differs markedly from the spoken language. The discussion so far suggests that the present-day state of diaglossia characteristic of many European language areas has not developed from a previous state of diglossia. The difficulty in deciding whether the language in the Early and Late Modern sources used by historical sociolinguists represents H or L indicates that the sociolinguistic situation in the past was perhaps not diglossic. One of the reasons “for restraint in invoking the diglossia concept” mentioned by Dorian (2002: 64) relates to the fact that it “simplifies linguistic space by dividing it into just two categories”, which is precisely the difficulty encountered in the previous paragraphs. What I will propose in the following section is that the sociolinguistic situation in the past was actually quite similar to that in the present: it was characterized by diaglossia (see also Rutten, 2016a).

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9.3 Sociolinguistic space from below The approach to language history from below criticizes traditional language histories that are largely or exclusively founded on a limited range of texts, often of a formal and/or literary kind and produced by privileged social groups, usually well-educated men from the capital or the center of the language area. Using a limited set of texts, socially, regionally and in terms of register, traditional language histories all too often describe linguistic history as the gradual disappearance of the variation that is so characteristic of medieval sources, and the concomitant rise of uniform standard languages (Elspaß, 2007; Watts, 2012). What remains unnoticed is “the whole range of texts and varieties that oscillate between formal written and informal spoken language” (Elspaß, 2007: 3). Thus, the approach from below “implies a radical change of perspective from a ‘bird’s eyes’ to a ‘worm’s eyes’ view” (Elspaß, 2007: 4), in at least two respects. First, there is a need to include texts by less-privileged people, that is, people from the lower and middle ranks of society, men as well as women, from various regions. In that sense, the approach from below is “a plea for a long overdue emancipation of more than 95% of the population in language historiography” (Elspaß, 2007: 5). Secondly, there is a shift towards “registers which are basic to human interaction and which are prototypically represented by speech in face-to-face-interaction” (Elspaß, 2007: 5). In historical linguistics, this implies a shift towards texts representing everyday language, for example so-called ego-documents such as private letters and diaries (e.g., Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003; van der Wal and Rutten, 2013). Historical sociolinguistic studies investigating ego-documents have revealed an impressive variability in the Early and Late Modern stages of well-researched languages such as Dutch, German, English and French, when these are supposed to have transformed into standard languages. What is more, the influence of standard language norms on actual usage patterns is often highly questionable (see Rutten, Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2014a). Elspaß (2005: 275–283), Elspaß and Langer (2012) and Langer (2014: 296–297) show that while polynegation is traditionally assumed to have disappeared from written German by the eighteenth century, it is found in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century informal writing. Another example from German is the so-called tun-Fügung, i.e., the use of tun ‘to do’ as an auxiliary as in er thut Schaf hüten für einen man ‘he tends sheep for a man’ (1887, taken from Elspaß, 2005: 264). This construction became stigmatized in the course of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and subsequently disappeared from higher registers (Langer, 2001). However, many examples can be found in nineteenth-century private letters (Elspaß, 2005: 254–269). Auer (2014: 165) shows that you was, while proscribed in eighteenth-century English normative discourse, was a “highly productive” variant in nineteenthcentury pauper letters. Focusing on eighteenth-century men of letters such as Dr Johnson, Addison, Pope and Swift, Osselton (1984: 125) already discussed their “dual



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standard of spelling”, one public, one private. They seemed to adhere to a similar system in their public writings, while employing a different system in their private letters. Osselton (1984: 129) adds that “traditional accounts of how English spelling developed historically have focused on the rise of one standard, not a variety of standards”. Martineau (2007, 2013) and Lodge (2013) list a range of non-standard features in Early and Late Modern French, found in private letters and diaries. Examples include orthographical features such as malaide ‘ill’ (standard malade), revealing a local pronunciation [ε], pourcelain ‘porcelain’ (standard porcelain), signaling the pronunciation [u], as well as morphological variants such as regularized arrivarent ‘arrived-3plur’ (standard arrivèrent) and deletion of the negative particle ne, where the standard maintains polynegation until the present day (Martineau, 2013: 137–140). Turning to historical Dutch, Rutten and van der Wal (2014) analyze a corpus of private letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see also below, Section 9.4.2). They found writing practices that are often assumed to have vanished from the written language in the postmedieval period: (1) a. andt for handt ‘hand’, eel for heel ‘whole’, ope for hope ‘hope’ b. hacht for acht ‘eight’, hueren for ueren ‘hours’, houde for oude ‘old’ c.  scip for schip ‘ship’, vrienscap for vrienschap ‘friendship’, scrijve for schrijve ‘write’ The southwest of the Dutch language area is characterized by h-dropping. Middle Dutch manuscripts show many instances of both h-deletion and h-prosthesis in words with an initial vowel. The seventeenth-century examples in (1a,b) illustrate that similar writing practices persisted well into the Early Modern period. In the Middle Dutch period, initial [sk] was common throughout the language area, usually spelled . With the gradual fricativization of the sk-cluster in late Medieval and Early Modern Dutch, [sk] was pushed back to specific areas such as the north of Holland, and emerged as the supralocal grapheme. The examples in (1c) show that remained in use well into the Early and Late Modern period. In addition, these private letters contain forms that are hardly attested at all throughout the history of Dutch: (2)  schulde for schulden ‘debts’, gesonde for gesonden ‘sent’, zij konde for zij konden ‘they were able’ Deletion of final n is normal in large parts of the language area, though not in the north-east, and is also common in the present-day spoken standard. In writing, from the earliest Middle Dutch onward, final n has been used. The data in (2), therefore, parallel those in (1a–c), in that they provide insight into the spoken language of the past. The issue is more complicated, however, since there appears to have been an

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alternative writing tradition favoring deletion of final n, which has been unknown up to the present day. Simons and Rutten (2014: 60–61), analyzing regional variation in the use of final n on the basis of the eighteenth-century part of the same corpus of private letters, show that 21% of the tokens linked to the north-east show deletion. This is remarkable, as we have to assume almost 100% maintenance of final n in the spoken language in the north-east, in the eighteenth century as well as today. This suggests that a new writing practice was spreading from areas with deletion to areas without deletion, contrary to the familiar supralocal tradition that retained final n. The ego-documents investigated by historical sociolinguists generally comprise much more localizable forms and much more variability than contemporary published texts. As mentioned in Section 2, this does not mean that they can be taken to represent local dialects in an immediate and unproblematic way. On the contrary, it is quite easy to identify variants that should be considered supralocal writing forms that may or may not have been used in the spoken language, such as forms of address, and moreover forms that are unlikely to have been used in the spoken language at all. Epistolary formulae are instances of the latter, for example the extensive health formula, also well-known from the history of English and other European languages: I let you know that I am in good health / I sincerely hope that the same applies to you / If not, I do regret it / As God knows, who knows the hearts of men (cf. Davis, 1965; Elspaß, 2012; Laitinen and Nordlund, 2012; Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 114–121). In sum, if we think of the history of languages such as Dutch, English, German and French in the Early and Late Modern period as consisting of relatively uniform supralocal printed language on the one hand, and localizable spoken dialects on the other, it will be tempting to describe them in terms of diglossia. However, over the past few decades historical sociolinguistic studies have shown that there is a whole range of texts in between these two poles. Sources from below seem to occupy a space between dialect and standard (Fairman, 2007). They display hybridity (Martineau, 2013) in that they combine seemingly direct reflections of the spoken language with features typical of the written code. In other words, there seems to be a certain intermediacy typical of diaglossia. When we take into account that normative discourse came into existence and greatly expanded in the same period, exhibiting selection and codification in the sense of Haugen (1966), the attested existence of intermediate forms can be taken even one step further. Even where the research literature claims that one variant had been selected in a situation of variation, language users do not necessarily use or prefer this form. This will be discussed in the next section.

9.4 Case study: Negation in Dutch In this section, I will focus on changes in the expression of negation in the history of Dutch. The case of negation is a well-researched one, and it is precisely against



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the background of the wealth of data that have become available over the past few decades that I would like to take the argument one step further. Studies of negation in the history of Dutch have mainly focused on so-called internal factors, viz. syntactic, semantic and lexical conditions, as well as on external factors such as region, rank and gender. Here, I would like to draw attention to individual variation, i.e., to interand intra-speaker variation. The main claim will be that the individual repertoires of the writers I will be looking at can be characterized as diaglossic, and hence do not fit the diglossia framework.

9.4.1 The change I will first explain the change in more detail. As in so many languages, Jespersenlike changes have occurred in the expression of negation in the history of Dutch. The typical development runs from single negation in Old Dutch (until ca. 1150) to bipartite negation in Middle Dutch (ca. 1150–ca. 1550), and back to single negation in Modern Dutch (from ca. 1550 onward). The typical Old Dutch negator is ne or ni, which occurs preverbally (3). Bipartite negations consist of the preverbal element ne and a postverbal negator such as niet ‘not’, geen ‘no’ or nooit ‘never’ (4). In Modern Dutch, the postverbal negator is maintained while the preverbal element is dropped (5).85 (3) ne ist heil himo in gode sinemo neg is salvation him in God his ‘There is no salvation for him in his God’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 298) (4) wi en moghense niet begripen we neg can.them neg understand ‘We can’t understand them’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 516) (5) we kunnen hen niet begrijpen we can them neg understand ‘We can’t understand them’ However, example (6) shows that bipartite negations already occurred in Old Dutch, as did the ‘new’ single negation with niet, particularly in the absence of a finite verb (7).

85 Note that the term postverbal is inaccurate insofar as it only applies to main clauses (and to finite verbs). Modern Dutch subordinate clauses have the verbal elements grouped together in (pre)final position so that all negators occur preverbally.

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(6) wir newillon niet uergezzan, thaz … we neg.want neg forget that ‘We don’t want to forget that …’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 298 (7) … assimilates, niet then michelon assimilatus (LAT) neg the bigger ‘… assimilated, not to the bigger ones’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 299) Example (8) shows that Old Dutch preverbal negation was still used in Middle Dutch, especially with specific verbs such as modals, while (9) shows that single postverbal negation also occurred. (8) sy en caent herhalen she neg can.it repeat ‘she can’t repeat it’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 517) (9) sech den lieden dat si niet sorghen tell the people that they neg worry ‘tell the people they shouldn’t worry’ (from van der Horst, 2008: 516) Finally, the old preverbal negation with ne is still in use in the southwest of the language area, particularly in short answers to questions (10). Bipartite negation still occurs in large parts of the south (11). (10) Slaapt hij? Hij en doet sleeps he he neg does ‘Does he sleep? He doesn’t’ (from SAND, 2008: map 48a) (11) Ik en ga niet naar school I neg go neg to school ‘I’m not going to school’ (from SAND, 2008: map 48b) While there were syntactic and/or semantic constraints on the use of particular types of negation in most periods,86 it is clear that all three options, viz. single preverbal, bipartite and single postverbal, occur in each period. This means that Jespersen’s cycle may be a useful generalization over diachronic tendencies, but perhaps no more than that (cf. Elspaß and Langer [2012]). It also means that we have to reckon with a considerable amount of variation, perhaps more than the idealized Jespersen’s cycle

86 See, e.g., the appropriate sections in van der Horst (2008) and SAND (2008), where the constraints are summarized.



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can accommodate. In the remainder of this section, I will focus on the change from bipartite to single negation in the Early and Late Modern period.

9.4.2 Conditions on the change from bipartite to single negation Quite some research has been done on the change from bipartite to single negation (cf. recent studies such as Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2012; Nobels and Rutten, 2014). Here, I will mainly summarize results from Rutten and van der Wal (2014) before focusing on individual variation in Section 9.4.3. It is usually assumed that the seventeenth century constitutes a decisive period in the history of this change, at least in what is often considered the center of the language area, viz. Holland. Whereas texts from around 1600 have mostly or exclusively bipartite negation, this rapidly changed as texts from around 1650 have almost 100% single negation (Burridge, 1993: 191–192). The obvious first condition identified in the research literature, therefore, is time. However, the rapid change established for the first half of the seventeenth century needs to be put into perspective in many respects. Investigating 2307 tokens of negation in 549 private letters from the second half of the seventeenth century, viz. from 1660s/1670s, Rutten and van der Wal (2014: 365) show that bipartite negation is still an important variant making up 35% of the tokens. The majority of these 806 tokens is related to the Holland area. Rutten et al. (2012) show that even in the second half of the eighteenth century, some letter writers from the Holland area still produced bipartite negations, testifying to its continued existence, even if it had largely disappeared from writings from Holland by that time. Furthermore, Vosters and Vandenbussche (2012) show that bipartite negation was still a common option in southern Dutch administrative writing from the early nineteenth century. Van der Horst (2008: 1941) says that bipartite negation had largely disappeared from writing by the nineteenth century and was mainly used as a literary device for stereotyping less educated or rural characters. In the spoken language, bipartite negation has remained in use until the present day, particularly in large parts of the south of the language area (Flanders, Brabant, cf. (11) above). A second important condition is region. Single negation clearly spread from the north to the south, creating major differences in the seventeenth century already between Holland in the north and Brabant in the south (Burridge, 1993). In their corpus of private letters from the 1660s/1670s, Rutten and van der Wal (2014) found that single negation was the dominant variant in the northern parts of Holland (88%) and in the city of Amsterdam (67%). The proportion of single negation was much lower in the southern parts of Holland (49%) and in the area immediately to the south of it, Zeeland (52%). Further south, in Flanders, the number was even lower (42%). This ties in with the afore-mentioned results reported by Vosters and Vandenbussche (2012), who found bipartite negations in nineteenth-century administrative language

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from the south, at a time when it was largely restricted to stereotypical usages in more formal genres such a literary prose in the north (Van der Horst, 2008: 1941). Since van der Horst and van der Wal (1979) considerable attention has been given to constructional constraints affecting the choice of negation type. Van der Horst and van der Wal (1979) identified various semantic and syntactic factors that have been confirmed in subsequent research, including recent studies within the historical sociolinguistic framework (e.g., Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2012). Rutten and van der Wal (2014: 368–373) elaborate the constructional constraints distinguishing between six different contexts. Focusing on their preference for the incoming variant, these can be arranged as follows: (12) V1 > Local > Constituent > Main clause > Inversion > Subordinate clause V1 clauses such as directives constitute the most progressive context (89% single negation). Local negation follows (82%), then constituent negation (where the second element is not an adverb but a pronoun such as niets ‘nothing’ or niemand ‘nobody’, 77%), main clauses (67%), main clauses with subject-verb inversion (56%), and finally subordinate clauses (56%).87 In other words, whereas the change is almost complete in some contexts, single and bipartite negation are still about equally frequent in other contexts. Finally, the change to single negation is a morphosyntactic change that rose quite highly on the scale of social awareness, which is one explanation for its high rate of change in the first half of the seventeenth century (see Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 385 for a summary). Several Holland-based literary authors consciously switched to single negation around 1640 after having used both single and bipartite negation in earlier writings. Literary authors from the more southern region of Zeeland, however, maintained both variants in their writings throughout their lifetime. In addition, the change was commented upon by grammarians, who mostly prescribed the incoming variant of single negation. Given the fact that many southern dialects maintain bipartite constructions until today, and taking into account the relatively scarce yet extant bipartite examples from later periods, it seems speech and writing developed different conventions. In the spoken language, or perhaps more generally in informal registers, both spoken and written, bipartite negation remained in use. In more formal registers, however, single negation was selected as the norm and thus became standardized, which is how this is often portrayed in linguistic histories (cf. van der Sijs, 2004: 534–537; van der Wal and van Bree, 2008: 217–218).

87 Other constructional factors mentioned in the research literature such as the choice of negator and the choice of verb were not confirmed by Rutten and van der Wal (2014: 373–378). See Rutten and van der Wal (2014: 378–387) for the importance of additional internal factors including phonetic context and syntactic complexity.



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Rutten and van der Wal (2014: 388–391) show that this development was paralleled by social variation, which however differed across regions and across construction type. In Amsterdam, for example, where the change had progressed considerably (67% single negation overall), strong differences between the various social ranks were found for subordinate clauses, but less so for main clauses. In Zeeland, where both options were still very much in use (52% single negation), important differences were established between the lower and middle ranks and for both main clauses and subordinate clauses. The picture so far is complicated. Considering the fact that ‘Old Dutch’ single negation as well as bipartite negation have remained in use until today, the change from bipartite negation to single negation in seventeenth-century Dutch is only a relative change, that is, a change of the relative frequencies of the three options single preverbal negation, bipartite negation and single postverbal negation. Several factors conditioning the choice of variants have been established. Time, region and construction type are important. Moreover, from the seventeenth century onward, single postverbal negation appears to have come to index standard language and/or formal registers, whereas other negation types became colloquial, informal and/or forms characteristic of the spoken language. These diverging indexes were paralleled by social differences. In the following section, I will argue that the situation was even more complicated.

9.4.3 Individual variation In this section, I will zoom in on the individual writers of the private letters analyzed by Rutten and van der Wal (2014), already referred to in the previous sections. The data come from a unique collection of Dutch private letters kept in The National Archives in London, written by people from various social ranks and by men as well as women. These letters make up the Letters As Loot Corpus (LAL Corpus), which is lemmatized, tagged for parts of speech and electronically available at brievenalsbuit.inl.nl.88 The corpus that formed the basis of Rutten and van der Wal (2014) comprised 549 letters by 424 writers from the 1660s/1670s (228,000 words) and 384 letters by 292 writers from the 1770s/1780s (196,500 words). The eighteenth-century letters are autographs (i.e., written by the people who sent them). Of the seventeenth-century letters, 260 are autographs, written by 202 individuals. Of these 202 writers, 168 individuals could be assigned to a specific social rank.89 These 168 individuals produced 219 letters.

88 See also www.brievenalsbuit.nl and Rutten and van der Wal (2014) for more background information on the data and the corpus. 89 Broadly speaking, the corpus comprises letters from all social ranks except the upper class, which has been central to many traditional language histories (cf. Rutten and van der Wal, 2014).

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As individual variation is the central topic here, I selected these 219 letters by 168 clearly identifiable individuals for the present study. Rutten et al. (2012) show that the proportion of bipartite negation in the eighteenth-century part of the corpus is very low, and I will therefore only discuss the seventeenth-century results here. From the selected 219 letters, all negations were extracted, mainly by searching for postverbal negators in various spellings such as niet ‘not’, geen ‘no’, niemand ‘nobody’, nimmer ‘never’ and nooit ‘never’. A total of 1085 negations were found, produced by 158 individuals; 10 individuals did not use negation in their letters. In a next step, only individuals were kept that produced five negations or more to further the reliability of the results. This meant that 74 individuals with fewer than five tokens were removed from the data set. As a consequence, the data set comprises 895 tokens by 84 individuals. Figure 20 presents the proportion of single negation in the letters of these 84 individuals. Figure 20 shows that 5 individuals consistently use bipartite negation (individuals 1–5), whereas 21 individuals only use single negation (individuals 64–84). This imbalance is unsurprising as single and bipartite negation were only equally frequent in Zeeland and the southern parts of Holland, while single negation was the dominant variant in the northern parts of Holland including Amsterdam. Figure 20 also shows that all other letter writers (i.e., a majority of 58 individuals) vary between single and bipartite negation, ranging from 13% single negation (individual 6) to 93% single negation (individual 63) with almost all possible proportions in between. In other words, Figure 20 signals a wide spectrum of variation in two respects. First, only 26 individuals are completely consistent in their use of negation, and all others are not. Second, the other 58 individuals are not equally ‘inconsistent’, but range from only one or a couple of bipartite negations to only one or a couple of single negations. Since region is such an important factor conditioning the variation, Table 22 splits up the results across region. The LAL Corpus distinguishes various regions, the most important being Zeeland and Holland, the main regions along the coast of the northern Low Countries (Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 11–12). The sizeable Holland region is further divided into South Holland with its main city Rotterdam, and North Holland. Moreover, Amsterdam, which is part of Holland, is kept apart for demographic reasons. Amsterdam was a highly urbanized metropolis attracting many immigrants from the Low Countries and beyond, and as such quite different from the rest of Holland. The writers who produce 5 negation tokens or more are related to these four regions. In addition, two writers are categorized as Other. One comes from the northern region of Friesland, the other has a German background, so both originate from regions where the shift to single negation is dated earlier, and they are among the writers who use single negation all the time (cf. also Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 367).



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Figure 20. Proportion of single negation with 84 individuals from the 1660s/1670s (LAL Corpus) with ≥ 5 tokens of negation

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 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch

In Table 22, the various proportions of single negation presented in Figure 20 are reorganized into five stages that correspond to the successive segments of the S-curve. The five stages are taken from Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 54–55) and represent the proportion of the incoming form. They should be interpreted as follows: the change is 1. incipient (below 15%), 2. new and vigorous (between 15 and 35%), 3. mid-range (between 36 and 65%), 4. nearing completion (between 66 and 85%), 5. completed (over 85%). Table 22. S-curve stages (single negation) with 84 individuals from the 1660s/1670s (LAL Corpus) with ≥ 5 tokens of negation, across region

1 2 3 4 5

85%

Individuals Zeeland

South Holland

Amsterdam North Holland

Other

N 7 12 21 17 27 84

N 3 2 5 1 0 11

N 0 1 8 5 8 22

N 0 0 0 0 2 2

% 8 12 25 20 32 100

N 4 8 6 10 4 32

% 13 25 19 31 13 100

% 27 18 45 9 0 100

% 0 5 36 23 36 100

N 0 1 2 1 13 17

% 0 6 12 6 76 100

% 0 0 0 0 100 100

Splitting up the results across region as in Table 22 shows that there are considerable regional differences. The large majority of writers categorized as North Holland and Other score over 85% single negation. The picture is slightly more varied in Amsterdam, where still only one writer scores less than 36% single negation. Table 22 also shows that 23 out of 27 individuals who have >85% are from these categories. For South Holland and Zeeland, the results are very different, with much more individuals in the lower two stages of the S-curve, i.e. below 36%. Despite these strong regional patterns, there are nevertheless quite a few individuals at stages 2 and 3 (15-65%) in Amsterdam and North Holland, whereas the change was nearing completion in Amsterdam (67% single negation, cf. Section 4.2.) and was completed in North Holland (88% single negation). Similarly, Zeeland comprises very conservative as well as very progressive writers. If we assume that bipartite negation was still very much part of the base dialect in Zeeland (Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 390–391), the number of individuals at stages 4 and 5 is remarkable. When we zoom in on the language use of specific writers, it becomes clear that the constructional constraints mentioned in Section 9.4.2. do not necessarily apply to individuals. Examples (13) and (14) are taken from a letter by Adam Erckelens dated 12 December 1664. He was a chirurgeon from Amsterdam, so relatively well-educated and socio-economically privileged, and he was probably only in his late twenties at the time of writing. He has 80% single negation, being slightly more progressive than the Amsterdam average (67%), which is in line with his social profile in terms of age,



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gender, schooling and rank. This is corroborated by his use of learned lexical items such as continuatie ‘continuation’, præserveren ‘protect’ and the present participle considererende ‘considering’ as well as several quotes from Latin. His letter contains 10 negations, and all regular main clauses and subordinate clauses have single negations. Interestingly, his 2 examples of bipartite negation occur in other contexts (13)–(14). (13) indien ghij lieden dat goet noch niet gestuurt hebt […] if you people these goods yet neg sent have […] soo en gelieft niet te senden so neg please neg to send ‘If you have not sent these goods yet, please do not send them.’ (14) dese Eijlanden van haar selve niet en hebben these islands of themselves neg neg have ‘These islands have nothing of themselves.’ (13) is a directive with the verb in the first position (V1), which is however preceded by resumptive so and the negative particle en. (14) is an example of constituent negation with the second element of the bipartite construction being a pronoun in object function instead of an adverb such as niet ‘not’. V1 and constituent negation are among the most progressive contexts; see (12). Burridge (1993: 192) shows that V1 was already quite progressive or even the preferred variant in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, both in Holland and in the southern area of Brabant. The second individual I will discuss is more or less the opposite of Adam Erckelens. On 7 December 1664, the middle-class merchant Jan Willems, who was based in Guadeloupe at that time, wrote a letter to his wife Maaike Hendriks in the town of Vlissingen in Zeeland. His letter contains 9 negations, 2 of which are single (22%), so that he is more conservative than the Zeeland average of 52% single negation. He has main clauses with single and bipartite negations, but also one subordinate clause with single negation (15). Recall that subordinate clauses constitute the most conservative context (12). (15) Ick hoore dat het niet wel gaen sal I hear that it neg well go will ‘I hear that it will not go well.’ Finally, I will focus on two individuals from South Holland who have a proportion of the incoming variant that is in line with the overall South Holland proportion of 49%. The first one is the sailor Lammert Jansen Vermeij who wrote a letter to his wife Maria Adams in the town of Maassluis, when he was in Portugal. His letter has 11 negative constructions, 5 of which are single negations (45%). The second writer is

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Anna Pieters van Enkel who wrote to her brother Willem on 2 February 1664. Her letter contains 13 negations, 6 of which are single (46%). Does the incoming variant enter in accordance with the generalization in (12) in Section 9.4.2.? Table 23 presents these individuals’ scores for single and bipartite negation across construction type. Table 23. Single and bipartite negation with two individuals from the 1660s (LAL Corpus), across construction type Lammert Jansen Vermeij Single V1 Local Constituent Main clause 3 Inversion Subordinate clause 2 5

Bipartite 1 2 1 2 6

Anna Pieters van Enkel Single 1 1 2 2 6

Bipartite 4 1 2 7

The most progressive contexts of V1, local and constituent negation provide only three tokens, though note that Lammert Jansen Vermeij has one V1-context with bipartite negation. In main clauses and subordinate clauses, which provide the most tokens, both writers distribute single and bipartite negation quite evenly. Single negation is entering main clause contexts, but is simultaneously entering subordinate clauses, and with a similar pace, so that both writers have subordinate clauses with single negation and main clauses with bipartite negation. The diachronic, regional, constructional and social dimensions discussed in Section 9.4.2 have all been confirmed for the LAL Corpus (Rutten and van der Wal, 2014: 363–392). It is clear, as it is from other recent studies such as Vosters and Vandenbussche (2012), that single negation was becoming the main supralocal variant for writing. As argued in Section 9.4.2, the picture is fairly complicated with many different factors conditioning the variation. In this section, focusing primarily on region and construction type, I have shown that the picture is even more complicated at the level of individual writers. In the next sections, I focus on social aspects, and discuss to what extent the supralocalization of single negation constitutes a case of standardization.

9.5 The limits of standardization Diachronically, bipartite negation disappeared from the written language but lived on in the spoken language, particularly in the south/southwest of the language area (see above, Sections 9.4.1 and 9.4.2). Single negation supralocalized as the conventional form in writing. Is this a case of standardization?



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As mentioned in Section 9.4.2, negation constitutes one of the most clear-cut morphosyntactic examples of high awareness and of explicit and implicit norms: there are examples from metalinguistic discourse proscribing bipartite negation, and there is evidence that literary authors based in Holland consciously switched to single negation around 1640. Literary authors are often regarded as normative because they disseminate the supposed prestige variety (van der Sijs, 2004: 553–607). Nevertheless, one generation later the majority of our writers do not use single negation all the time (Table 22). In addition, most of the writers with 100% single negation are linked to North Holland, Amsterdam, Friesland or Germany, i.e. to regions where the shift towards single negation was already completed or nearing completion. At the same time, literary authors from Zeeland were far less reluctant to maintain bipartite negation in their writings, probably because bipartite negation was still very common in their base dialects. Nonetheless, there are only a few writers from Zeeland in our corpus who use bipartite negation exclusively. In fact, quite a few individuals from Zeeland are at stages 4 and 5 (Table 22). Focusing on the results for groups of speakers in terms of regional background, gender and socio-economic background, Nobels and Rutten (2014: 41–42) argue that a direct relation between normative discourse and usage patterns is unlikely. Whereas regionally bound distributional differences between social groups and gender groups could be established, there is no unambiguous evidence of a strong top-down effect on the population at large. One important observation in this respect is the still fairly frequent use of bipartite constructions in Amsterdam. Shifting attention to individual writers in Section 9.4.3., I have argued that these do not seem to act in accordance with a supposed norm. Apart from the large amount of inter-speaker variation, the data for individuals also reveal a lot of intra-speaker variation that does not seem to be compatible with a uniform norm. At this point, it may be wise to repeat that the letter writers in the LAL Corpus do not write dialect (Section 9.3). The point is that they neither write in what could be considered the contemporary standard, be it a Holland standard with single negation or a possible Zeeland standard with bipartite negation. They appear to use an intermediate repertoire with variable use of single and bipartite negation. This sociolinguistic situation can be characterized as diaglossic. Discussing the sociolinguistic situation in present-day Flanders, De Caluwe (2009: 17–19) proposes to think of intermediate repertoires in terms of sliding knobs. This is an intuitive way to conceptualize and visualize diaglossia. For each individual language user, a pane with sliding knobs can be drawn, with each linguistic variable being represented by a sliding knob that can take any position between the dialect and standard, depending on the context and individual preferences and experiences.90 Such a pane with sliding knobs in various positions acknowledges the high inter- and intra-speaker

90 The situation described by De Caluwe (2009) is slightly different in that he does not talk about dialects, but about the space between regiolects and standard language.

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variation that characterizes many diaglossic repertoires. In the present case, Figure 20 in Section 9.4.3. presents the results for one such variable, and for 84 individuals. Nevertheless, there is an increasing use of single negation in writing. Contrary to the large amount of variation found in actual language use, the discourse on negation is relatively uniform. Single negation is selected early on and codified. As discussed in Section 9.2, the spread of localizable forms to areas where they were not in use before is a common phenomenon that is often called supralocalization or supraregionalization (Milroy, Milroy and Hartley, 1994; Nevalainen and TiekenBoon van Ostade, 2006; Hickey, 2012). Note, however, that supralocalization also occurs in situations where there is no explicit normative discourse and also applies to phonological variables that are only relevant in the spoken language. In other words, the diachronic, regional, constructional, social and individual factors referred to in Sections 9.4.2. and 9.4.3. may be used to describe and explain the common process of supralocalization that led to the dominance of single negation. From that perspective, the question is whether it is necessary to also draw upon a theory of standardization. The widespread inter- and intra-speaker variation shown in Section 9.4.3. suggests that the individuals in the LAL Corpus did not adhere to a uniform norm, and that the sociolinguistic situation should be characterized as diaglossic. Feeding on its gradual disappearance from the spoken language, bipartite negation also disappeared from the written language. The diachronic, regional and constructional conditions are useful generalizations at the level of groups of writers, but they do not necessarily work at the level of individuals.91 Similarly, social aspects such as awareness, avoidance and norm-consciousness are part of the community as a whole but are not necessarily important at the individual level. The fact that some individuals switched to an exclusive use of single negation does not imply that individual writers in general strove for a standard language, were aware of a standard or considered themselves to be part of a standard language culture. Important, in other words, is the valuable distinction between supralocalization and standardization, which is connected to the Milrovian concept of standardization as an ideology, the topic of Section 9.6.

9.6 Standardization as a datable phenomenon It follows from the discussion in Section 9.5 that, in order to incorporate the findings of the historical-sociolinguistic literature into a theory of standardization, we need to distinguish between the linguistic process of norm convergence or supralocalization, and the metalinguistic phenomenon or ideology (Milroy and Milroy, 2012) of

91 See Auer and Hinskens (2005) for an evaluation of sociolinguistic theories and research results connected to the problem of linking indivual verbal behavior to language change at the community level.



Standardization as a datable phenomenon 

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standardization (cf. Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2006). Supralocalization is a common phenomenon throughout the world’s languages, both spoken and written, and easily detectable in historical-sociolinguistic research. Standardization and standard language ideology (Lippi-Green, 2012), on the other hand, are closely related to the formation of the modern nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and should be seen as the linguistic counterpart to the sociopolitical ideology of nationalism. This is a fairly restricted notion of standardization, which however allows to keep it conceptually apart from similar phenomena such as supralocalization. This is necessary as periods of supralocalization can, of course, also exhibit metalinguistic discourse, and the linguistic forms promoted therein can very well be the forms that are simultaneously supralocalizing in usage. In fact, this is exactly the situation of negation in Early and Late Modern Dutch. Single negation is supralocalizing in writing, a change which is affected by several internal and external factors. At the same time, single negation develops into the preferred variant in metalinguistic discourse. But there is no evidence that single negation should be considered to be the ‘standard’ variant. The majority of writers in the LAL Corpus use both single and bipartite negation. To call single negation the ‘standard’ form suggests that the variant used by a handful of literary writers and language commentators is favored above the variants used by other writers, most of whom do not favor this one variant. Instead, single negation is just one of the variants in their repertoires. Another reason to distinguish supralocalization from standardization, and to restrict standardization in the history of western European languages such as Dutch to the age of nationalism, is the changing target audience of metalinguistic discourse through time (Nevalainen, 2014; Rutten, Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2014b). Grammar books and spelling guides in the Early Modern period were often targeted towards quite specific and socially limited groups of writers such as poets, ministers, foreigners or Latin schoolboys. Only in the course of the eighteenth century does the target audience become socially more inclusive. In the Dutch context, the envisaged readership of normative discourse is gradually broadened, and eventually encompasses the Dutch ‘nation’, i.e., the whole of the population, men as well as women, and people from all social backgrounds. The crucial ideological step includes the aim to spread one form of the language among the population, to eradicate all other forms such as local dialects, to reconceptualize the preferred variety as the only ‘real’ variety of ‘the’ Dutch language, and to develop a national educational system to disseminate this one ‘neutral’ variety (Rutten, 2016b, 2016c). This ideology comes into existence just before 1800 and informs language and education policies in the first decades of the nineteenth century, which includes school reforms and the establishment of national grammar and spelling regulations. In sum, what the northern Netherlands display in the decades around 1800 is the rise of the standard language ideology and its immediate implementation in policy.

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 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch

One important metalinguistic consequence is the splitting of the sociolinguistic continuum into standard and non-standard (cf. Dorian, 2002). Hierarchization of forms and varieties existed well before 1800, but it is with the construction of the written variety of Dutch used by socio-economically privileged groups as the ‘neutral’ variety of Dutch that the diaglossic continuum is discursively split into standard and non-standard. The standard is moreover indexed as invariable, even diachronically (Rutten, 2016b, 2016c). This means that, in the northern Netherlands in the era of nationalism, a diglossic interpretation of sociolinguistic space results from a metalinguistic, ideological operation carried out in and applied to a diaglossic situation.92 Returning to negation, this means that the diaglossic situation of seventeenthcentury Dutch, with many individuals using both single and bipartite constructions, also witnessed supralocalization. The standardization of Dutch, however, is datable to the decades around 1800. By that time, single negation had already become the common supralocal variant in northern Dutch (Rutten et al. 2012), and metalinguistic comments on the use of negation are hardly found after c. 1750.93 Put differently, there was no need to explicitly select single negation as the standard variant. In the national grammar written by Weiland (1805: 283–284), bipartite negation is only mentioned in a footnote as a historical oddity. With standardization feeding upon earlier instances of supralocalization (Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2006), single negation thus became the standard Dutch variant without, however, ever being standardized.

9.7 Conclusions In this paper, I have argued that the history of Dutch does not display the assumed development from diglossia to diaglossia (cf. Auer, 2005, 2011; Grondelaers and van Hout, 2011). Already in the Early and Late Modern period, sociolinguistic space as evidenced in the written record was diaglossic. Many examples to corroborate this claim can be found in the historical-sociolinguistic literature (Rutten, 2016a); here, I have mainly focused on negation in the history of Dutch. In such a period of diaglossia, one variant may develop into the conventional supralocal form preferred in writing, which is what happened to single negation in this period, fueled, in all probability, by the spread of single negation in the spoken language. The individual repertoires attested in a corpus of private correspondence, and the high degree of inter- and

92 Note that this does certainly not exclude the possibility that, focusing on the spoken language, standard-dialect situations in the twentieth and twenty-first century can be usefully described as diglossic. 93 Recall that the situation in the southern Netherlands is different (cf. Vosters and Vandenbussche, 2012).

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intra-speaker variation, suggest that the supralocalization of single negation was not accompanied by wide-spread norm consciousness, which is one reason to avoid the term standardization to describe this situation. In the final parts of the paper, I have argued that we should limit the concept of standardization to the standard language ideology that came into being around 1800. One consequence of this ideological shift was the metalinguistic simplification of sociolinguistic space into standard and nonstandard, i.e., to a state that could be described as diglossic.

References Auer, Anita. 2014. Nineteenth-century English. Norms and usage. In Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Norms and usage in language history, 1600–1900. A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective (Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 3), 151-169. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Auer, Peter. 2005. Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In Nicole Delbecque, Johan Van der Auwera & Dirk Geeraerts (eds.), Perspectives on variation: Sociolinguistic, historical, comparative (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 163), 7–42. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Auer, Peter. 2011. Dialect vs. standard: A typology of scenarios in Europe. In Bernd Kortmann & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), The languages and linguistics of Europe (The World of Linguistics 1), 485–500. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Auer, Peter & Frans Hinskens. 2005. The role of interpersonal accommodation in a theory of language change. In Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens & Paul Kerswill (eds.), Dialect change: Convergence and divergence in European languages, 335–357. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burridge, Kate. 1993. Syntactic change in Germanic: Aspects of language change in Germanic with particular reference to Middle Dutch (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 89). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Coulmas, Florian. 2002. Writing is crucial. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 157. 59–62. Davis, Norman. 1965. The Litera Troili and English letters. The Review of English Studies. New Series 16. 233–244. De Caluwe, Johan. 2009. Tussentaal wordt omgangstaal in Vlaanderen. Nederlandse Taalkunde 14. 8-25. Dorian, Nancy. 2002. Diglossia and the simplification of linguistic space. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 157. 63–69. Elspaß, Stephan. 2005. Sprachgeschichte von Unten. Untersuchungen zum Geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Elspaß, Stephan. 2007. A twofold view ‘from below’: New perspectives on language histories and language historiographies. In Stephan Elspaß, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic language histories ‘from below’ (1700-2000) (Studia Linguistics Germanica 86), 3–9. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Elspaß, Stephan. 2012. Between linguistic creativity and formulaic restriction: Cross-linguistic perspectives on nineteenth-century lower class writers’ private letters. In Marina Dossena & Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.), Letter writing in Late Modern Europe (Pragmatics & Beyond New series 218, 45–64. Amsterdam & Philadephia: John Benjamins.

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Anni Sairio

10 ‘Like a pack-hors trying to copy after an antilope’: A case of eighteenth-century non-native English This paper is a case study of eighteenth-century L2 English in the letters and autobiography of the Armenian gentleman officer Emin Joseph Emin, for whom English served as social capital. The paper investigates how a non-native speaker constructs social and cultural identities in English, what language variants are used in non-native English when there is a chance for variation, and how questions of identity can be investigated also through phraseological units. Reference terms in L2 letters indicate a command of L1 epistolary conventions as well as cultural transfer from the writer’s native background. Metalinguistic comments of the writer’s ‘Asiatic’ style seem to be connected to the affective and hyperbolic language of the letters. A sociolinguistic corpus analysis indicates avoidance of variant verb forms in contrast to ongoing variation in L1 letters. This paper provides an empirical study of historical L2 English in a period preceding the status of English as a world language and its final stages of codification. Keywords: Late Modern English, SLA, historical sociolinguistics, reference terms, spelling, language and affect, cultural transfer, phraseological units, identity.

10.1 Introduction This paper explores historical L2 English as a case study of the private and public writings of Emin Joseph Emin, an eighteenth-century Armenian Anglophile for whom English served as social capital; the language provided him a means to learn English military skills that would advance his life-long pursuit to liberate Armenia. Research into historical non-native Englishes is currently based on case studies and small sets of data (see, for example, Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2012 on Dutch translators of English texts and Geisler, 2013 on Swedish noblemen), and this study is no different. Nevertheless, even small data sets provide a number of research avenues in terms of, for example, second-language acquisition processes, prestige of different language variants and social meaning of variation before language standardization takes off, and the phase of language change. Before English became a world language, individual motives and resources for language learning in and outside the language culture varied considerably. In the early and late modern periods, roughly from the 1600s to the 1800s, non-native Englishes were spoken in Great Britain in the contexts of trade, diplomacy, science, culture, and servitude; by high and low language learners who represented various ethnicities, social backgrounds and linguistic domains, with a range of motives and resources © 2016 Anni Sairio This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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for language learning, by those who were welcome and not so welcome, and by those who were self-taught and those more formally educated (see also Mesthrie, 1996, Sharma, 2012). Non-native English speakers in Great Britain included aristocrats, diplomats, traders, sailors, scholars, servants and refugees arriving to England for various reasons and with drastically different opportunities; some created legitimate spaces for themselves, while others were constrained and ostracized. In this period preceding language codification, the scholar is able to sidestep the focus on standard language which studies of present-day language acquisition tend to concentrate on (Siegel 2003: 181). Questions of interest to a scholar of historical non-native language variants include: –– What is the status of English for various groups of non-native speakers, particularly outside the language culture? What are the power relationships between particular L1 and L2 speakers, and the status and power of the L2 speakers (Siegel 2003: 183)? –– What kinds of language-learning resources were available, and what kind of access could non-native speakers gain to relevant L1 prestige variants? –– If there is a chance for language variation, what variant does the L2 writer choose? Currently, this territory of research opportunities is mostly uncharted and highly theoretical. Bibliographies of texts are yet to be compiled, let alone extensive corpora – the focus of research is still very much at the grass-root level of individual lifestories. In this paper, I present one such life-story. I examine how an eighteenth-century L2 writer with a multicultural, multilingual background uses English to construct and signal social and cultural identities, and what language variants this writer uses when there is a chance for variation. The research is based primarily on Emin Joseph Emin’s private letters, but it draws also from his published autobiography. Concerning the topic of social and cultural identity, I am particularly interested in Emin’s use of reference terms, what Emin and his English correspondents call his ‘Asiatic’ style of writing, and identity descriptions in his letters. The study of language variation focuses on the full and contracted spellings of regular past tense verbs and past participles as well as modals and auxiliary verbs in Emin’s private letters. These frequencies are compared with -ED variation in contemporary L1 manuscript letters in the Bluestocking Corpus (see Sairio, 2009), which has been edited and compiled from manuscript correspondence of upper-class letter-writers, many of whom knew Emin personally. This unpublished version of the Bluestocking Corpus consists of 154,000 words and covers a time span from 1738 to 1778. Finally I draw some conclusions of the implications of these studies.



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10.2 The life, letters and autobiography of Joseph Emin (1726–1809) In the eighteenth century, Armenia was divided between the Ottoman and the Persian empires. As a merchant’s son, Joseph Emin’s life was intertwined with the Armenian diaspora and Armenian merchant networks. He was born in Hamadan, Persia, and spent his youth in Calcutta; this city with a vibrant community of Armenian merchants was founded as an outpost for the East India Company in the seventeenth century. Emin’s first languages include at least Armenian and Persian, and he was an adult learner of English. Fisher (2006: 81) suggests that Emin was multilingual in Armenian, Persian, Turkish, English, French, and Portuguese, and probably Bengali. In his late teens, Emin wanted to study English to learn English military tactics (in his own words, to “learn the art of war” (Emin, 1792: 140)). In this extract from his autobiography Emin describes how, as a young man already planning to leave for Europe, he was asked by his father what languages he intended to learn: He was then in Calcutta, very cautious not to open his mouth or utter a word of his intention of going to Europe, when, all on a sudden, his father, just at ten o’clock in a propitious morning, asked him if he chose to learn Portuguese? he said, no; the second question was, French? he answered in the negative; after a little pause, the third question was, English? here Emin hesitated a little while, and with a very low voice said, yes, lest the father should suspect his design; and continued writing all the time with a pretended indifference. (Apcar, 1918: 37–38)

This exchange (whatever its actual form or content) took place in the 1740s in Calcutta. With his father’s permission Emin enrolled in the Calcuttan English school in the Old Courthouse, where he studied under a Mr. Parrent (Emin 1792: 38). I have not been able to find information about the curriculum or teaching materials. In 1751, at the age of 25, Emin worked his passage to England on the East India Company ship Walpole. The arrival was not easy: his first years were spent doing hard menial labor as a porter, bricklayer, and shoeblack. He was able to attend lectures at Mr. Middleton’s school in Bishopsgate Street while working as a servant there, but I am not aware of the details of this curriculum, either. By chance, it seems, he met Edmund Burke, the Irish-born Member of Parliament and author who befriended him and hired him as a copyist. As Fisher (2004: 104) notes, from the first encounter with Burke, Emin discovered “that he gained British respect and continued sponsorship through his expressions of his individual and indomitable quest” for the liberty of Armenia. Emin impressed figures of high society with his determination and spirit: he made friends with British elite, gaining the protection of the Duke of Northumberland, and was sponsored as a cadet officer in the Royal Military Academy in the late 1750s. He spent roughly two decades in military campaigns in Europe and in the Caucasus, where he did not gain much support for his cause in Armenia (see Panossian, 2006 for his campaign in Russia), returned to India in 1773, and finally settled in Calcutta in 1785, where he lived for the rest of his life. Through correspondence he was able to reconnect with some of

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his English friends who were still alive, though the tardiness and unreliability of the post caused him to wonder if he had been deliberately ignored. “I wish I was a penman to know the properest form of drawing,” he ponders in a letter to Elizabeth Montagu, from whom he hadn’t heard in five years: “ – a Complaint of you to yourself, for without any Fault you seem to have cast me out of the happymaking Books of your Sublime Memory” (Apcar, 1918: 490). A letter from Montagu arrived not long after this discontented epistle, and the correspondence was resumed for a few more years. English high society was the target of Emin’s language learning, and the language domains in which he was able to access native (and other non-native) variants were several: they include informal venues and face-to-face interaction, formal and informal correspondence, and printed media which he both consumed and produced. At first he learned English as a foreign or distant language in an external L2 setting, and later in a dominant L2 setting as the majority language (see Siegel 2003: 179 on sociolinguistics settings for SLA). Emin arrived in England in 1751, some years before Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was published, and a decade before the era of bestselling grammar writing. He spent years immersed in the language culture, with contacts with at first the lower and middling classes and then the upper classes. In Calcutta in the 1780s, Emin associated with the philologist, lawyer and polyglot Sir William Jones, who was at the time a puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal (see Franklin 2011), and he mentions being able to “enjoy almost every day in the Week at his House his learned improving Company, in a word I am in Love with his benevolent Heart and greatness of Soul” (Apcar, 1918: 486). The data of this study consists of Emin’s private letters published in Apcar (1918), and his autobiography, published in 1792 as a first edition and in Apcar (1918) as a second edition. The personal letters are from two time periods: 1757–1761, during which time Emin was in London and in continental Europe, and 1785–91, when he had settled in Calcutta. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Emin’s L1 contacts represented a little hub of English language and culture in Bengal, connected to the East India Company and British expansion in South Asia. These are two very different points in time and space, with the informant in different social positions and circumstances and with different contacts with the language and with native speakers. In total the letters include 11,900 words, which sets serious limits to linguistic analysis but enables avenues of research which do not require quantity of data. The letters are published material, but Amy Apcar (Emin’s great-greatgranddaughter) states that the original spelling and punctuation have been retained, with nothing else changed except the long s (1918: vii). From the at times highly idiosyncratic spelling it would appear that the editor has indeed been faithful to the original (e.g., “as is writen in the Rejister book of my Heart”, Apcar, 1918: 494). The letters are addressed to a mostly London-based circle of English gentry and political elite: most of the letters are written to the Bluestocking hostess Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800). Other recipients include George, first Baron Lyttelton, Dr. Messenger



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Monsey, Lord Albermarle, Mr William Pitt, Lord Northumberland, and a collective group of recipients referred to “all the Ladies, & Patroness of Joseph Emin” (Apcar, 1918: 78). These individuals had the ability to assist Emin in his upward social mobility, and some of them (at least Montagu, Monsey and Lyttelton) took a personal interest in him and also discuss him in their own letters. To gain access to this material, Amy Apcar contacted Montagu’s biographer Emily Climenson, who sent her Emin’s original letters then included among Montagu’s correspondence in Climenson’s possession (this collection later became the Montagu Collection at the Henry E. Huntington Library). As Apcar puts it, “after communicating with Mrs. Climenson, I acquired from her all the letters of Joseph Emin that she still possessed. Some, unfortunately, had been already disposed of, for, as she wrote to me, little did she think she would ever hear of a descendant of Emin” (1918: v–vi). Emin’s autobiography (1792) stands at a magnificent 139,000 words and 640 pages. He wrote it in Calcutta and arranged it to be printed in London, and in 1789 Emin wrote to his old friend and sponsor Elizabeth Montagu in the hopes that English ladies would subscribe to his work: “My gardian Angel Sir William Jones has been so good as to correct the wrong spelling and faulse English. Lady Jones and several Gentlemen have seen it and approved of it. [...] the style is plain the meanest Capasity may read and understand it” (Apcar, 1918: 491). Apcar’s edition (1918: xix) includes a letter from William Jones to Emin, in which the former comments on his proofreading method: I send back the last number of your Narrative with my very hearty thanks for the pleasure which the whole work has given me; it has been highly interesting to me; but, as there is no reasoning on tastes I cannot be sure that it will be thought equally interesting by others; the style remains wholly your own; for I have corrected only these errors in language and orthography, which were unavoidable in an English work written by a native of Hamadan; and it is not the least of your merits that you have acquired such a command of words, in a language so different from Persian or Armenian.

Jones then offers the following advice, which suggests that Emin’s sociolinguistic competence and command of English conventions were not entirely acceptable: [...] let me exhort you, when you revise your work, to strike out every passage that may favour of self-approbation. Let me also advise you to discard forever the Asiatick style of panegyrick, to which you are too much addicted; weak minds only are tickled with praise, while they, who deserve it receive it with disdain. They, who say or write civil things as they are called, may not be flatterers, but they certainly resemble them; as a brave man may be a real Hero, but if he dress like a fop, he will be mistaken for one; I will add only one argument more: the Asiatick style, whether dedicatory or epistolary, is utterly repugnant to English manners, which you prefer, I know, to those of Persia. For all these reasons I return your dedication to Colonel Pearse uncorrected; if I know him he would not be pleased with it, and I cannot be accessary to any thing that appears even in a questionable shape. (Apcar, 1918: xx; emphasis added)

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Both Emin and his English friends and correspondents refer to his ‘Asiatic style’, and in Section 10.3 I will attempt to unpack this characterization of Emin’s style. For Emin, English language and Englishness seem to have signified a means to learn military skills and to access the European values of enlightenment. English was not yet completely codified when Emin began to study it, and the standardization process fully kicked in towards the end of the eighteenth century, so variation was prevalent, particularly in private language use, and language variation would have been what he was faced with on arrival. In the English context, Emin can be described as a successful social riser and a highly motivated adult learner who gained access to the genteel society and was eventually welcomed – to some degree – into the social group whose language he was learning. English language provided Emin with social capital: it was a means for him to attempt to realize his plan of Armenian liberation.

10.3 Identity construction: reference terms, Asiatic tinctures and cultural identity This section addresses Emin’s identity constructions through his reference terms, his ‘Asiatic style’, and aspects of self-identification and ethnicity, also in terms of how English contemporaries viewed him. To begin with, Emin’s name is not a straightforward matter. His letters are signed as Joseph Emin or J. Emin and he published his autobiography as Emin Joseph Emin, but Joseph was in fact his father’s name. According to Apcar (1918: vii), “[a]mongst Armenians then, and up to a much later period, a man was known by his own and his father’s babtismal names, and family, or surnames were not in use”. Emin’s baptismal and family names were one and the same, and Apcar assumes that this is why he adopted his father’s name. Emin seems to have first spelled his name as Ameen, “and it is so spelled by his son Joseph in the title-deeds of what is now 23 Canning St., Calcutta, a house bought by Joseph in 1811” (Apcar, 1918: viii). In his autobiography he generally refers to his father as Hovsep, and in Russia he goes by Emin Hovsepwitz (e.g., Emin, 1792: 247). The personal name thus functions as an active and complex system of identification which conveys cultural conventions that were not necessarily the writer’s own. Table 24 presents the most common self-references in Emin’s letters, divided into proper nouns and other nouns. The self-references in the formulaic elements of the letters (item 1.1) are evenly divided between Joseph Emin and J. Emin, and the contents of the letters (item 1.2) include a handful of names, as Emin occasionally refers to himself in the third person. His epistolary self-references rely strongly on the terms ‘slave’ and the more customary ‘servant’. Fifteen of his twenty-one ‘slave’ references are used in closings of the letters, so it has a specific formulaic function. As this term highlights Emin’s deference towards his correspondent (particularly Montagu), it also functions as ‘othering’ language, as a reminder of his non-British



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background. ‘Servant’ is also typical in the closings of the letters: it is a part of the contemporary English letter-writing style. Table 24. Self-references in Emin’s letters 1. Proper nouns 1.1. Salutations and closings: 22 J. Emin (10), Joseph Emin (10), gratefull humble Servant Emin, obliged hum: Ser=t= and gratefull Slave Emin 1.2 Body of the letter: 6 Slave Emin, Emin your Friend, O’ poor Emin, his inchangeable friend Emin, your honest Emin, true Friend to Emin 2. Nouns 2.1. Slave: 21 most greatfull humble Slave, your faithfull Slave & servant, Your Persian Slave, your distracted Slave, her faithfull asiatick Slave 2.2. Servant: 20 Your humble Servant, most gratefull obliged humble Servant, Your sincere and gratefull Servant, Your most obed=t= and obliged hum: Ser=t=

Reference terms for the self and others were an important and highly controlled social practice in eighteenth-century English. They index the social position of individuals and indicate where each is placed in the social ladder, and for that reason, salutations and closings in letter-writing tend to be highly formulaic (see Nevala, 2009). Examples (1)–(3) compare closings in the Bluestocking Corpus with closings in Emin’s letters in examples (4)–(7). As mentioned, Emin’s letters are addressed to the writers of the Bluestocking Corpus, and the letters in the Bluestocking Corpus are all written to friends or family members. (1) Dear M=rs= / Boscawens most faithfull, / most affectionate Friend, / Obliged & Obed=t= H=ble= Serv=t= / E Montagu (2) I am Sir with great regard Your Obliged & Obed=t= / H=ble= Serv=t= E Montagu (3) I am, Dear Madam, Your most obliged and affectionate / friend and servant / Benj: Stillingfleet (4) I am / Madam, / Your and all the Noble Ladies of England / who are my beloved Friends / most obedi=t=, most greatfull humble Slave / Joseph Emin. (5) Allways remembering and / dutyfull humble Servant / Joseph Emin. (6) Your great Wisdoms admirer / and most duty full humble Servant & Slave / J. Emin. (7) Great S=r= / your most obedient most obliged / devoted humble servant / J. Emin.

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The closings in L1 letters are formulaic, with the terms obliged, obedient and servant usually present and allusions to friendship included. Emin follows the pattern of these closings, but adds an ornate and exceedingly polite and humble tone with the appellation of ‘Slave’ (which he ascribes for himself) and other modifiers. Example (7) is the most conventional of his closings. It occurs in a 1758 letter to William Pitt, who was at the time the informal leader of the British cabinet and would later become the Prime Minister. This conventional style is undoubtedly a case of audience design: the less personal attachment between Emin and the recipient, the less liberties Emin takes in his letter-writing conventions. He is exceedingly polite, but at times deliberately exotic in his practices. Table 25 is a compilation of all the salutations in Emin’s letters, divided into conventional (i.e. typical of educated L1 English practices) and unconventional cases. Table 25. Conventional and unconventional salutations in Emin’s letters 1. Conventional salutations: Madam (3), My Lord (2), My Dearest Lord, Dr Doctor Monsey, Dr Doctor, Sir, my dear Friend, My dear Madam, My dearest Madam 2. Unconventional salutations: My Noble Ladies; My dear Queen; Most gracious Queen; My Eastern Lord & Magnanimous Councelor; My dearest Lord, and noble Counsellor; To the Wisdom of Europe Sister to the great King of Prussia excellent Mrs Montagu; To the Queen of Universe; To the most worthy, and most learned Mrs Montague / May it please your Ladyship

The conventional salutations in the beginning of the letters all contain an acknowledgement of the addressee which recognizes their social status, or possibly the close relationship between the writer and the addressee. Emin uses both types of salutations in letters to the same people: Elizabeth Montagu is referred to both as (my dear/dearest) Madam and My dear / Most gracious Queen, and Lord Lyttelton is referred to as My Eastern Lord [...], My dearest Lord, and noble Counsellor, and simply as My Lord. The letters written to Montagu from Calcutta contain hyperbole also in the use of ‘Ladyship’, which is overly polite for Montagu’s status as a member of gentility but not nobility. In the body of the letters, unconventional salutations take the following hyperbolic, affectionate and somewhat ‘othering’ forms: (8) How I was overjoyed to see once more my dear dear, and dearest of all M=rs= Montagu’s Letter? that ever since I am hardly able to contain myself for Joy, & Happyness. (Emin to Montagu, May 5 1761) (9) His mind is exactly like my dear uncle M=r= Edmund Burke’s, and my Lady Jones’s affable Cordiality Care and Indulgence towards me and my Son, much resembling



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my Princess Patroness the aimable M=rs= Montague, in short I am happy and hope your Ladyship is so too: (Emin to Montagu, August 7 1785) Uncle in reference to Emin’s old friend Burke signifies respect and is undoubtedly cultural transfer from Emin’s L1 background. Princess Patroness and your Ladyship as reference terms are again a notch higher than Montagu’s social status requires, and Princess probably reflects the ‘Asiatic’ identity which Emin tends to assign Montagu more generally; I will return to this topic after the following discussion of the ‘Asiatic’ style. Cultural transfer in Emin’s writing is mentioned by Sir William Jones, Emin himself, and Emin’s correspondents. According to Fisher (2004: 91, n. 1) ‘Asiatic’ carries a more perjorative tone in the eighteenth century than ‘Asian’. However, Emin’s autobiography contains only the latter term, often in reference to himself (e.g., “more common with us Asiatics than with Europeans”, Emin, 1792: 6). Elizabeth Montagu comments on his style of writing to her sister in 1757–1758: Mr Emin’s letter is intirely in the Asiatick stile with an address to Mr Montagu upon his great felicity in having such a wife that wd make you laugh, upon the whole he has had an agreable Campaign for a Man who dispises danger & volupté. If one considers he was a Porter 5 years ago it is some rise to be allowed free conversation with ye Duke of Cumberland, & to be particularly distinguished by him, at which he seems pleased but not at all surprized. You may suppose the way he has made for himself in England does not abate & diminish his enthusiasm and adventurous spirit. (Montagu to Sarah Scott, 1758-8; Apcar, 1918: 86)

Montagu could be referring to the following letter of Emin’s: I hope my Friend Mr Montagu will not be displeased at this, for it is true what I say, He must be the happiest man in the World: to have possessed the wisest of all Women whose greatness of Soul is to be honoured and talked in the presence of Kings, and who is worthy to rule Kingdoms and Empires; I say again, happy are those that can see you always. The Jewels, and all the precious Diamonds on the Pea Cock Throne of Grand Mugol is not enough to purchase those words that comes out of the mouth of my Queen Sheba. (Emin to Montagu, September 14 1757; Apcar, 1918: 83)

The Asiatic style seems to be connected to Emin’s marked use of affect terms. Affective language features include, for example, emotive, evaluative, and attitudinal adjectives and verbs, evidential, hedging and intensity adverbs, deontic modality (commissives, directives, volitives), terms of address and kinship, honorifics, expletives and interjections, T/V pronouns, and reported speech and code-switching (Besnier, 1990; Biber and Finegan, 1989). The following examples of Emin’s letters indicate that his language is heavy with affect features, and this seems to be the defining characteristic of the Asiatic style.

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I will not have my Queen be vaxed at the Misfortune of her Slave who looks upon all sorts of Misfortunes of this World but a pleasent Dream. We have a Fraze among us in Persia, they say a Brave-man’s head is always in Troubles; so I am happy when every thing proves contrary to me, and I don’t care what becomes of me I am but a Mortal, I will do my Endeavour as long as I have any Life in me to serve my Country, and if I am born to save my sheperdless Nation, none shall be able to hinder me, Gods will must be done, unto whom I will put my whole Trust, be glad o! my wise Queen of Sheba for I am happy. (Emin to Elizabeth Montagu, May 16 1757; Apcar, 1918: 70)

The address terms (my Queen, her Slave, my wise Queen of Sheba) are highly affective, indicative of a different social hierarchy than that of Great Britain, and atypical of Late Modern English letter-writing. The passage contains interjections and exhortations (be glad o! my wise Queen), affect adjectives and verb phrases (I am happy, be glad, vaxed, pleasent), and intensifiers (always). The religious undertone and a passionate sense of duty and destiny come through strongly. This passage illustrates Emin’s cultural and national identity as an Armenian and Persian, illustrated by an oriental proverb; he is a man with a mission, and the purpose to his life is to serve his nation; he is also a religious (non-Catholic) man who accepts God’s will. Emin displays his Armenian identity and cultural heritage, and he also invites Montagu to be part of his culture. The emphasis on close, devoted relationships is also likely to give these letters a slightly curious tone for an eighteenth-century English addressee. Some months later Emin writes to Montagu thus, illustrating the strength of emotion which their friendship ignites in him through the power of his imagination: To tell you madam after my misery which is above mentioned, I have one very great Consulation that is, when I am alone in my Closet, I make a Teliscop of my mind, and when I have made it, I fix my Eyes to it, & through which I discover your Picture painted on my little Heart, by the great Wisdom of my sincer Friend M=rs= Montagu, I begin to be overjoyed, and glad; like the Poor, & whether bitten Mariners at sea when they see their Native Land. (Emin to Elizabeth Montagu, Oct 4 1757; Apcar, 1918: 88)

Here the affective tone and content comes about through a direct and involved address term which mimics conversation (to tell you madam), intensifiers and adjectives (very great, sincer, little, overjoyed), and a simile which draws a comparison between Emin imagining an encounter with Montagu and weather beaten mariners catching a glimpse of their native land. Fisher notes that with ‘Queen of Sheba’, Emin both shows her respect and simultaneously “identif[ies Monatgu] with eastern culture [...] never aspiring to possess her” (Fisher, 2006: 79). Affect language in non-native Englishes could be a fruitful research topic particularly in terms of politeness features. The appearance of thou and thee in Emin’s autobiography (19 tokens) and their complete absence in the letters (bearing in mind that the latter data set is very small) suggest sociolinguistic competence. Thou was no longer a feature of Late Modern English letter-writing, but in specific contexts of his autobiography Emin was able to use this rare pronoun. These contexts include Biblical psalms (“Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under



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foot” 1792: 168), reported speech (however crafted) of both Europeans and Central Asians (a major in the Prussian army tells Emin to “[g]o with him; let me hear a good character of thee” 1792: 115), and almost Shakespearian flair in Emin’s disgust with a treacherous companion. In this passage, the contemptuous thou is paired up with second-person singular verb forms art, dost and hast: Emin fired, and the shot went through the cap. He loaded the piece again, and then said to Sarkiss, Thou villain! who art neither a Christian nor Mahomedan, hast thou now seen what o Emin can do? how dost thou deceive me with your cunning words, and run away with my gun? how art thou now? dost thou see death with open eyes or not? (1792: 474–475)

Thou illustrates Emin’s familiarity with religious discourse and drama, and possibly indicates language transfer from Caucasian cultures. In his autobiography, Emin describes a tense meeting with an East India Company agent in the Ottoman town of Basra in the 1760s. Emin introduces himself to this skeptical Englishman: My name is Emin: I am the son of Joseph Michael Emin of Calcutta, an Armenian by religion, and by birth a native of Hamadan in Persia.” Mr. Moore said, “You seem to be an Irishman by your accent.” Emin smiling answered, “You honour me much in thinking so; for the Irish are a very brave nation, with deserved renown.” This answer made the gentleman look serious: he asked Emin if he understood his native language? He said, “Yes.” (Emin, 1792: 422)

It may be that the agent’s comment of Emin’s accent was not intended as a polite acknowledgement of Emin’s native-like English skills but as a suggestion that his language has a foreign element. However, Fisher (2004) notes that Emin’s identity as a non-Catholic Christian enabled him to be accepted by Britons; at one point, a potential employer “cursed Emin for being a Frenchman” and subsequently identified him as a German when Emin explained that he was, in fact, Armenian. “Well, well, Germans and Armenians are all alike, as long as you are not a Frenchman,” was the Englishman’s conclusion (quoted in Fisher, 2006: 75). Anti-Catholicism was prevalent in eighteenth-century England. Religion was a key aspect of Emin’s identity, and in part it allowed him to be accepted in English society. He “made his Armenian Christianity a special marker of self-identification with Britons, and explicitly distanced himself from the Catholic French as well as Muslims and Jews” (Fisher, 2004: 97). To Lyttleton he describes his disappointment when he was not permitted to take part in a battle during his involvement in the Seven Year War: “Had not I been a Christian belive me I wou’d cut the Head of the man off who prevented me” (Apcar, 1918: 125). AntConc analysis shows that in Emin’s autobiography, the word Christian (72 tokens) clusters around vocabulary such as character, faith, conduct, patience, behaviour, and education, which have associations with eighteenth-century values and English virtues of polite behavior.

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10.4 Spelling variation This part of the chapter explores language variation. Three main spelling variants have been attested in eighteenth-century English for regular past tense and past participle forms (the -ED forms): the emerging standard -ed, the apostrophized -’d, which was part of printers’ practice and thus a marker of learning in the early part of the century, but came to be viewed as old-fashioned towards the end of the century, and the simple -d variant, which mostly appeared in private writing and went unnoticed by grammarians (Oldireva Gustafsson, 2002; see also Osselton, 1984, Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2009). Here I investigate the extent to which Emin uses these variant forms, and how his choices compare with that of his English contemporaries. Table 26 shows that Emin’s spelling of -ED forms is almost categorically standard, with 94% (133) and 96% (45) in the -ed variant in the two time periods. The figures are small particularly in the letters of 1785-91, but the diachronic usage appears to show almost absolute preference for the emerging standard variant. The lexemes which Emin contracts (rob’d, resolv’d, inclos’d, askd, calld, advisd, misbehavd) all omit the final in pronunciation, so spoken language may have had an influence. Contemporary L1 letters display considerably more variation (see Sairio, 2009: 233 for this research), and the writers in the Bluestocking Corpus use the available variant forms to a higher degree than Emin. 
Table 26. -ED variation in L2 and L1 English: Emin and Bluestocking Corpus

-ed -’d -d

Emin 1757-61

Emin 1785-91

BC 1757-62

BC 1775-78

94% (133) 3% (4) 3% (4)

96% (45) 4% (2) 0

66% (660) 24% (239) 10% (99)

67% (489) 14% (101) 19% (141)

Emin seems to have picked a linguistic pattern and not varied his usage. It is not possible to hypothesize whether his avoidance of variation is something that bleeds into Emin’s English from his native language(s), but in this respect his non-native spelling is more uniform than that of contemporary educated writers. Next I explore Emin’s spelling of the tentative modals could, should and would, which in eighteenth-century English are contracted as cou’d/coud/cd/cd, and the negative modals/auxiliaries do not, cannot and will not, which form enclitic contractions with or without the apostrophe. These are low-frequency items compared to -ED variation, but provide additional perspective. The contractions of tentative modals mirror their pronunciation: is silent in could, should, and would, whereas the enclitic contractions don’t, can’t, and won’t are essentially different lexemes from the full forms. Grammarians and rhetoricians particularly criticized the enclitic contractions as vulgar style straight from the mouths of milliners and valets (Percy, 2002; Haugland, 1995). Examples (10)–(14) illustrate how these variants appear in Emin’s letters.



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(10) On my attending General York, it was agreed that I should go to my Brother King of Prussia (Emin to Montagu, 1758) (11) I am vexed at Heart that I cou’d not have the Honor to write this Letter from the Army of the King of Prussia (Emin to Lord Lyttelton, 1758) (12) I cou’d have wishd that my Noble Friend Ladies who are my Patroness & who are so fond of Heros, and hearing of Battles, to have seen it, which wou’d have been realy worth their while. Then I wou’d have wished again that Heavenly Charriots wd have desended from the Gods above (Emin to ‘all the Ladies, & Patroness of Joseph Emin’, 1757) (13) Do not think I write this as a Hint, but beleive me as I am a man of Honour & Truth I will be as good as my word. (Emin to ‘all the Ladies, & Patroness of Joseph Emin’, 1757) (14) Don’t you be uneasey about me at all, if you hear me not successful, I am resolv’d to die for my Country, I will do all to help towards it. (Emin to Montagu, 1758) Table 27 provides the figures for these full and contracted verb forms. Given the low frequencies of these items, the two data sets of Emin’s letters are combined into one; the Bluestocking data derives from previous research in Sairio (2009: 285). Table 27. Modals + negative auxiliary do: full and contracted forms in L2 and L1

full modals contr. modals full neg. contr. neg.

Emin

Bluestockings

1757-62

1775-78

14 30% 33 70% 23 74% 8 26%

full modals contr. modals full neg. contr. neg.

309 74% 108 26% 135 83% 28 17%

101 41% 148 59% 73 88% 10 12%

Tentative modals are an exception in Emin’s general preference of full forms over contractions: here the contractions are considerably more frequent, and this is also in contrast to native English, apart from the years 1775-78, which may result from the data and reflect particularly informal letter-writing among genteel Bluestocking women. Emin’s spelling of tentative modals could be influenced by spoken language, as he seems to spell certain lexemes by the ear, perhaps through analogy with a homophone: his letters include cases such as Poor & whether bitten mariners, Pease, sowrd, symiter, and gardian angel. In the spelling of negative modals and the negative auxiliary do (do not / don’t), non-native spelling follows the native English convention; though typical of spoken

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language, these contractions were criticized by language prescriptivists, and the relative infrequency of enclitic contractions may reflect the influence of normative tradition.

10.5 Emin as an L2 writer: returning to the question of identity Amy Apcar characterizes Emin as a “stranger to the language” (1918: vii). Was he a stranger? His style is flourished, ornate, and occasionally marked with language transfer; Sir William Jones warned him against using hyperbolic and panegyric language, and in this respect Emin’s sociolinguistic competence did not entirely meet English standards. A detail in Jones’s letter to Emin suggests that Emin’s reading of Jonathan Swift’s works has given him wrong ideas (note that Jones draws from Asian connotations to make his point); “Swift has misled you by inculcating that men of wit love praise, be assured that every man of wit (unless wit and sense be at variance) must prefer plain food to sugarplumbs, and would rather be rubbed with a coarse towel than with Dacca Muslin with all its flowers” (Apcar, 1918: xx). To what extent does English function for Emin as a language of communication on one hand and a language of identity on the other (Hüllen, 1992, translated from German and quoted in Fiedler, 2011)? Following this distinction, English as a language of communication has a primarily functional nature, whereas in language of identification a speaker learns the language in order to be integrated into the speech community (Knapp, 2008: 133, quoted in Fiedler, 2011: 82). Fiedler (2011: 83) points out that some ELF research has challenged this dichotomy and suggested that there is overlap between the two (see, for instance, Kalocsai, 2009, Virkkula and Nikula, 2010), so that elements of identification tend to be present also when the emphasis is on communication. Emin’s hybrid reference terms which by and large follow English conventions but include elements of his L1 culture already provide some suggestions as to this question, but we can also approach this topic by examining Emin’s use of phraseological units of English and identity-specific expressions. Phraseological units such as conventionalized formulae and idiomatic expressions tend to indicate high proficiency in ELF; as communicative intentions, phraseological units can make the text more expressive in order to (for example) attract attention, convey an ironic stance, put the interlocutor at ease by evoking humor, for instance, and to generally achieve a creative and expressive tone (Fiedler, 2011). They tend to be difficult for non-native speakers to learn, and Fiedler notes that ELF speakers often use “culturespecific L2 expressions and transfer phraseological units associated with their own mother tongues and cultures into English to express identity” (Fiedler, 2011: 90). We see culture-specific L2 expressions in Emin’s allusions to Persian proverbs (“We have a Fraze among us in Persia, they say a Brave-man’s head is always in Troubles”, Apcar, 1918: 70), but also idiomatic English expressions and references that allude to command and understanding of English literary values. In a 1757 letter to Montagu,



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Emin notes that English people “are very changable People”, and explores English characteristics with an allusion to Joseph Addison: Mr Addison in his Poems upon the nature of men when he comes upon English Nation discribes the following Lines. “Fickled of mind” changing as their Skies, so soon they value they as soon despise. I think he gives a very pretty and a true Character. Pray madam do not be angry at this my Remark, I know you love your Country as well as I do mine (Emin to Elizabeth Montagu, 1757; Apcar, 1918: 83)

He comments as an outside observer, and draws a contrast between Montagu’s love of her country and his own patriotic love of Armenia. This comment indicates familiarity with respected English authors, but from an outsider’s perspective. As for idiomatic L1 expressions, Emin refers to ‘old England’ three times in his letters and another three times in his autobiography. He writes to Montagu in 1785 from Calcutta: Pray remember with my best Respects to Mr Burke, I intreat he will kiss for me, and for my Son your Ladyships powerfull hand, and when we are come to old England we will kiss the sole of his Shoe, and my best wishes with my Respects to his Lady, and his brave Son Mr Burke. (Emin to Montagu, August 7 1785; Apcar, 1918: 486–487, emphasis added)

‘Old England’ could be used here in contrast with the British expansion in South Asia. In another letter Emin notes that his fourteen-year-old son Arshak “understands the Armenian the Persian, and little smattering of English, he must see old England and have his Education in a Gentleman like manner” (Apcar, 1918: 495), which indicates of his continued appreciation of the social and cultural capital of the English language. Fiedler (2011: 85) suggests that the pillars of non-native speaker identities are formed of 1) the English native culture(s), 2) the speaker’s own L1 culture(s), and 3) an awareness of membership in a specific speech community; Giles and Byrne’s (1982) inter-group model, which focuses on social group characteristics in SLA proficiency, could also be applied in historical data. L2 speakers may construct an identity as non-native speakers by means of meta-communicative utterances regarding their use of English (Fiedler, 2011). Emin’s texts indicate a keen awareness and appreciation of (elite) English culture and his own L1 culture(s) alike, but he is a product of the Armenian diaspora, geographically mobile for decades on end, and he states in his autobiography that “Emin is neither of one nation nor of the other” (1792: 136). Fisher (2006: 73) points out that a recurrent theme in Emin’s autobiography is how “his personal courage and willingness to adapt to British values would (and should) earn him the admiration of British audiences”. Emin is constantly aware of how he expresses himself in English, the linguistic tools available for him, and how he is perceived by his interlocutors. “I am sorry & vaxed that I have had no proper Education,” he writes to Montagu following a flourished description of her many fine qualities: “I might have sat down, & wrote years togather in the Prais of you madam. It hurts me, because I cannot enough express my Sentiments to shew how much I am

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obliged to her” (Apcar, 1918: 83). Emin’s letters are to a great extent performances, and in a letter of 1791 to Montagu, he makes the following metalinguistic comment: I am proud that you think I retain my English, but sorry that I cannot avoid mixing an asiatic tincture in my writing, I indeavour much to naturalize my sentiments to the English, but to no purpose, I am like a pack-hors, sure enough (for I was a porter) trying to copy after an antilope, I find I forget my own Gate; for it is not very easy to make a fierce-Tyger to become as tame as a Lamb; (Apcar, 1918: 495)

Montagu has obviously congratulated him on his English skills after so many years spent outside the language culture, and Emin responds with a self-reflective simile that contrasts his arduous writing process with the elegant and effortless language use of a native speaker. At the time he was working on his autobiography as the first Asian to publish an autobiographical text in English (Fisher 2004: 94), but he is still only a clumsy pack horse trying to imitate an antilope. What he means by taming a tiger to model the behavior of a lamb is somewhat ambiguous; perhaps this could be a reference to polite upper-class English manners, which are difficult to acquire after years of near constant warfare and the belligerent culture of the Caucasus region, which is a constant topic in his autobiography.

10.6 Conclusion Historical varieties of L2 English are yet to be systematically researched, particularly in periods preceding the status of English as a world language and its final stages of codification. This paper presents a case study of a multicultural and multilingual eighteenth-century L2 speaker who refers to himself in his autobiography as being neither of one nation or of the other. Emin Joseph Emin’s use of reference terms was deliberately hybrid, combining English norms and conventions with an ‘Asiatic style’. He did not model his spelling along the lines of contemporary L1 gentry practices, but skipped between highly uniform and more informal spelling. Emin’s first languages were insufficient to meet the requirements and communicative needs of the English society, but his native culture was a powerful ideological and identity-related tool in his pursuit of a military education and the liberation of Armenia (which did not come to be). Emin knew how to use formulaic salutations and closings, but he also used hyperbolic and highly affective modifiers, honorifics and titular phrases that may have appeared as over-the-top to his English correspondents. Through Emin’s references to contemporary literature we know that he had access to these resources and understood their social value. The positive response to his nationalistic aspirations was very strong, so adopting an entirely English style would not have served his purposes – Emin draws from his cultural heritage because this is what identifies him as a man of his nation.

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There are numerous challenges to comparing multilingual individuals’ language proficiency with that of monolingual native speakers, and this is even more problematic in a historical context (see Siegel, 2003). I suggest that the eighteenth-century context makes it reasonable to approach second language acquisition in terms of the learner’s access to contemporary prestige patterns, language variation that has social meaning among L1 speakers, and (on the whole) the language practices of the social group by which a learner wishes to be accepted. We should also consider the broader L1 developments of the time and the language learner’s social identities and motivation. Context, in other words, is key.

References Apcar, Amy (ed.). 1918. Life and Adventures of Emin Joseph Emin, 1726–1809. The Baptist Mission Press: Calcutta. Besnier, Niko. 1990. Language and affect. Annual review of anthropology 19. 419–451 Biber, Douglas & Edward Finegan. 1989. Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect. Text 9. 93–124. Emin, Joseph. 1792. The Life and Adventures of Joseph Émèin, An Armenian. Written in English by himself. Printed in London. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Fiedler, Sabine. 2011. English as a lingua franca – a native-culture-free code? Language of communication vs. language of identification. Journal of Applied Language Studies 5(3). 79–97. Fisher, Michael H. 2004. Asians in Britain: negotiations of identity through self-representation. In Kathleen Wilson (ed.), A new imperial history: Culture, identity, and modernity in Britain and the Empire 1660–1840, 91–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, Michael H. 2006. Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian travellers and settlers in Britain, 1600–1857. Delhi: Permanent Black. Franklin, Michael J. 2011. ‘Orientalist Jones’: Sir William Jones, poet, lawyer, and linguist, 1746–1794. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geisler, Christer. 2013. Non-native 17th-century English. Studia Neophilologica 85(2). 174–186. Giles, Howard and Jane L. Byrne. 1982. An intergroup approach to second language acquisition. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (1). 17–40. Haugland, Kari. 1995. Is’t allow’d or ain’t it? On contraction in early grammars and spelling books. Studia Neophilologica 67(2). 165–184. Hüllen, Werner. 1992. Identifikationssprache und Kommunikationssprache. Über Probleme der Mehrsprachigkeit. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 20(3). 298–317. Kalocsai, Karolina. 2009. Erasmus exchange students. A behind-the-scenes view into an ELF community of practice. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies 3(1). 25–49. Knapp, Karlfried. 2008. Entretien avec Karlfried Knapp (Propos recueillis par Chantal Cali, Martin Stegu et Eva Vetter) [Interview with Karlfried Knapp]. Synergies Europe 3. 129–137. Mesthrie, Rajend. 1996. Imagint excusations: Missionary English in the 19th-century Cape colony, South Africa. World Englishes 15(2). 139–157. Nevala, Minna. 2009. Altering distance and defining authority: person reference in Late Modern English. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10(2). 238–259 Osselton, Noel E. 1984. Informal spelling systems in Early Modern English: 1500-1800. In N.F. Blake and Charles Jones (eds.), English historical linguistics: Studies in development [CECTAL Conference Papers Series, No. 3], 123–137. University of Sheffield.

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Panossian, Razmik. 2006. The Armenians. From kings and priests to merchants and commissars. New York: Columbia University Press. Percy, Carol. 2002. The social symbolism of contractions and colloquialisms in contemporary accounts of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Bozzy, Piozzi and the authority of intimacy. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 2. (http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/bozzy,%20 piozzi1.htm) Sairio, Anni. 2009. Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network. Sociolinguistic Issues in eighteenth-century episolary English [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, 75]. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique de Helsinki. Siegel, Jeff. 2003. Social context. In Catherine J. Doughty and Michael H. Long (eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition, 178–223. Malden, MA, Oxford, and Melbourne: Blackwell. Sharma, Devyani. 2012. Second language varieties of English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English, 582–591. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2009. An introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2012. Late Modern English in a Dutch context. English Language and Linguistics 16(2). 301–327. Virkkula, Tiina & Tarja Nikula. 2010. Identity construction in ELF contexts: A case study of Finnish engineering students working in Germany. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 2. 251–273.

Anja Voeste

11 A mensa et thoro. On the tense relationship between literacy and the spoken word in early modern times94 Four case studies in syntax, morphology and graphematics shed light on the dissociation of spoken and written language in early modern times. Members of the upwardly oriented educated bourgeoisie as well as the precariat classes had to cope with the requirements of literacy and mistrusted their own linguistic evaluation, particularly in relation to inflectional morphology and spelling. Although consulting grammars and trying to avoid ‘dialect mistakes’, they achieved literacy to such a degree that they could express their feelings in precise terms. Nevertheless, their spelling mistakes indicate difficulties to master the correct pronunciation of academic vocabulary. Keywords: dialect mistakes, graphematics, hypercorrections, inflectional morphology, non-standard phenomena, orthography, pronunciation, spelling, syntax.

11.1 Introduction From a historical perspective, one crucial event influenced language development significantly: the dissociation of spoken and written language in late medieval and early modern times. From as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one can assume the existence of a literary language of the educated classes that was structurally different from the spoken language. This literary language (which still contained regional and local features) exerted such a strong influence as the leading language variety that, in the long run, a secondary orality emerged which was ‘imprinted’ by literacy.95 Spoken and written language were thus in a conflicting relation of rejection and attraction, being subject to two divergent trends: differentiation and

94 A mensa et thoro is the Latin version of from bed and board, a legal term for judicial marital separation. 95 A conclusive anecdote is handed down to us from the eighteenth century: The Leipzig theologian Carl Friedrich Bahrdt reports on a long-awaited, but nevertheless disappointing encounter with the famous Swiss religious philosopher Johann Caspar Lavater. Lavater’s words sounded ‘dismally disgorged’ to Bahrdt’s ears and Lavater’s alleged grammatical errors were considered shameful (cf. Bahrdt 1922: 346–47). This incident reflects the effect of a rigorous attitude of linguistic correctness that was no longer confined to the written language, but extended to the spoken language as well – with all its social implications. Here, it also attests to a north–south divide in acceptability of dialect registers. © 2016 Anja Voeste This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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homogenization. Both developments were fostered by the elites of corporate society, particularly the urban patriciate and the scholars. But there is more: The relatively simply constructed corporative medieval society (and this is definitely not about provoking the judgmental image of the ‘Dark Ages’) was gradually transformed into a modern, highly complex, functionally differentiated society. It comprised autonomous subsystems such as government, public administration, economics and law, as well as the spheres of private life. The diversity of spheres and subsystems in early modern times correlated increasingly with a corresponding plurality of linguistic varieties which were based on the interactions between sets of language variants and a whole range of social factors. In addition, pragmalinguistic circumstances motivated the speakers or writers to be ‘disloyal’ to their primary varieties: every single communicative situation or textual subgenre required a specific linguistic decision, namely the choice of the appropriate variant. The outcome of this development constitutes the intricate hierarchy of registers and varieties that to this day enables us to linguistically master differentiated social requirements. One can assume that the political, economic and intellectual elites were able to choose the required formal, honorific, facetious, intimate or dialect registers in social settings in the manner in which celebrated virtuosi like Bach or Bruckner were choosing their organ registers. However, relatively little is known of how members of the precariat class, that is, those who were not part of the elites and rarely had access to education, acted in the conflicting field between orality and literacy. Were they aware of the above-mentioned dissociation? Is it likely or even conceivable in the first place that people from the lower social ranks learned to write and to use literacy without noticing the differences between spoken and written language? And if non-elite writers were aware of the dissociation, did they deliberately choose prototypical features of written language and of literary registers in writing – be it in order to ensure the corresponding gain in prestige, or simply to meet the media requirements? Or did they – which might also be taken into account – intentionally refrain from choosing written style variants because these might have seemed feigned and stilted96 or were too puzzling for a potential non-elite recipient? This would mean that one may not find in their texts the prototypical features of written language, but rather those that were closer to the spoken language. And if this were the case, would it be possible to distinguish between an unintentional and a deliberate use of spoken language features? To make things more complicated, one may anticipate another, third possibility, namely, a mixture of both oral and literary language features within

96 This was discussed in the context of standardization by Osselton (1963; 1984) and Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1998) for the history of English spelling. They referred to the intriguing possibility that there were periods of double standards, one epistolary spelling used by ‘gentlemen’ and one scholarly spelling, also used in printing. For German see Voeste (2010).

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one and the same text. In his study on the use of comparative particles in private letters of the nineteenth century, Elspaß (2005: 35) could show that it was the writers at the lower end of the social spectrum who, even though having attended only elementary school, used both the ‘highfalutin’ and therefore probably the most prestigious literary variant (größer denn) and the highly stigmatized variant (größer als wie), while the writers who went to secondary school only used the more neutral variants größer als or größer wie. Accordingly, it is perfectly possible that non-elite writers were more or less familiar with the features of written language, but that they did not always master their appropriate use according to the pragmalinguistic circumstances.97 This could have led to the aforementioned possible mixture of both oral and literary language features. At first glance, it seems relatively easy to detect such mixing ratios and to sift out the literary or oral features in question. But the farther we go back in time, the less reliable our judgment will be, chiefly because we cannot make convincing statements about historical orality. Moreover, comprehensive late medieval or early modern texts from the hands of ordinary people can be considered a contradiction in terms. And even if we are lucky enough to have those texts, we know very little about the educational background of their exceptional authors from the precariat class. What were the extraordinary circumstances that enabled them to achieve literacy to such an extent as, for instance, to defend their major decisions in life in autobiographical notes (Section 11.2). Against this backdrop of skilled writers from the precariat class, it might even be misleading to deduce the level of education and literacy from a person’s economic status. This also becomes evident when looking at the situation of the educated bourgeoisie during the eighteenth century (Section 11.3). The new educated citizenry belonged to the intellectual elite (or even formed and fostered it) as a matter of course. However, politically and economically speaking, the burghers had to face dependency and powerlessness. The famous grammarian and lexicographer Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) is a striking example. He contributed greatly to the standardization of German with his numerous works on grammar, spelling and style and, above all, with his dictionary, called ‘the Adelung’ (Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774–1786). But for long periods of his life he lived in economic distress and had to keep himself afloat by translating and correcting the works of others. It was only at the age of 45 that he secured a tenured position as principal librarian to the elector of Saxony at Dresden.98 Therefore, concepts such

97 A letter of request from the nineteenth century contains, for example, adverbs such as flehentlich ‘imploringly’ and gnadenvoll ‘mercifully’, which can be classified as literary variants. Their use as attributive adjectives however (eine flehentliche Hilfe ‘an imploring support’) illustrates the writer’s inexperience (cf. Tenfelde & Trischler, 1986: 299–300). 98 Basler (1953: 63).

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as ‘language history from below’ have to deal with the differences and divides of economic, political and intellectual elites. Aspiring members of the new educated bourgeoisie ceased to rely on their linguistic self-evaluation and their own pronunciation. Morphology in particular can be assumed to be an open door for uncertainties and discomfiture, concerning for example case endings and plural formation.99 Spoken language was no longer trustworthy, but became a possible source of error. The speakers’ uncertainties are reflected in the search for the allegedly correct variants in grammars of the time. But what to do if the advice given was contradictory? Should they follow tried and tested models or comply with the rules given by recent and innovative grammars that proclaimed a more natural style of writing (Section 11.2.2)? However, the widest gap between spoken and written language existed in spelling. Here, the unreliability of the spoken language as a counselor for inexperienced writers took shape for everyone to see (Section 11.4). ‘Dialect mistakes’ and difficulties in mastering the academic vocabulary with its borrowed words of foreign origin were unsettling stumbling blocks. Hypercorrections reveal the unavailing attempt to adapt to an orthographic standard. On the basis of certain spelling mistakes we can even assume that the lack of familiarity with literacy affected spoken language, too. Mispronunciations may have hindered less educated speakers to be fully integrated into their upwardly oriented social class.

11.2 Syntax The dissociation of spoken and written language may have been noticeable to inexperienced, non-elite writers because of the ‘big’, syntactic differences that arose due to the recognizable structural patterns of written language: In German, these are first and foremost the expansion of the sentence frame, the increase of hypotaxis and the differentiation of independent and dependent clauses by using verb-second and verb-final word order respectively. The differing structural features were carried over in active reading, but also in listening to texts read aloud. Syntactic patterns may therefore have been acquired in a comparatively easy way – in contrast to, for example, orthographic patterns (see Section 11.4).

11.2.1 Subject gaps in asymmetric coordination In the following, I will look into contentious syntactic constructions taken from autobiographical notes written in the context of social relegation. They will illustrate

99 On cases of doubt about eighteenth century plural formation cf. Schmidt-Wilpert (1980).

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the above-mentioned difficulty in identifying prototypical features of spoken or written language in texts from the lower social ranks. The authors are the bookbinder and Anabaptist Georg Frell (1530–1597), born in Chur, Switzerland, and barber, wigmaker, and Pietist Johannes Tennhardt (1661–1720) from Saxony. Frell (1942/1571) describes his formative years, spent separated from his family under severe economic circumstances. He gives an account of his exclusion and subsequent exile from his native village due to his religious beliefs. One hundred and forty years later, in his autobiography published in 1710, Tennhardt depicts key events of his life and describes his visionary epiphanies. After his wife’s death in 1695, Tennhardt was plagued by severe self-doubt. Following 1 Cor. 11: 4,100 he had given up his profession as wigmaker, fallen into poverty and had been taken into custody because of his criticism of orthodox dogmatism.101 Both autobiographical notes give evidence of social ruin and deprivation induced by their authors’ religious beliefs, which diverged from those of the majority. However, it is probably due to their religiosity that they were concerned with reading and writing to a considerable extent at all. We can even assume that it was religious readings that provided them with the means to express their feelings in precise terms. Frell and Tennhardt were irrefutably members of the precariat class. Did they deliberately choose literary registers in writing or did they fall back on features more typical of spoken language? At times, this question cannot be answered in a straightforward manner, as may be illustrated by the syntactic phenomenon of subject gaps in asymmetric coordination. Both texts in question show several examples of asymmetric coordination, where the subject is omitted in the second conjunct and only a preceding oblique case in the initial conjunct cataphorically supports the correct grammatical decoding of person and number (see examples [1]–[4]).102 (1) Er erloubt unns, und zogend darvon und kamend gen Gebwiler in das Elsaß … (Frell 1942/1571: 461) ‘He gave us his permission, and departedPST:1PL and camePST:1PL to Guebwiller in Alsace …’

100 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 101 Cf. Braun (1934: 1–13). 102 Volodina and Weiß (2012) distinguish between ‘real’ historical pro-drop (null anaphora) phenomena and context-dependent null subjects such as topic drop, diary drop and subject gaps in coordination. In the examples discussed here, we encounter 1st person singular and 1st person plural null subjects, something that may be due to structural licensing conditions. As the conjuncts do not share the same subject, the construction requires an antecedent in the initial conjunct which ensures the reference. I call this type ‘subject gap in asymmetric coordination’, because the null subject is different from the subject in the initial conjunct. (However, it should not be confused with Asymmetric Coordination [AC] in Standard German, cf. Reich 2008.) For Standard German null subjects cf. Trutkowski (2016), for pro drop in OHG and in modern dialects cf. Axel and Weiß (2011).

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(2) … unnd schlugend mich die gsellen um ein yetlichs ding so hertlichen übel, unnd verlogend mich dan gegen der frouwen, das sy auch stätts ob mir war mit schlagen, und lernet nütz dartzů. (Frell 1942/1571: 462) ‘… and for every little thing the journeymen beat me so heartily bad, and slandered me before the mistress so that she too laid on me beatings all the time, and madePST:1SG no progress in learning.’ (3)  Der Traum lag mir etliche Tag im Kopff und wünschete immer/ ich möchte doch wissen was dieser Junge machte. (Tennhardt 1710: 12) ‘The dream went around in my head and wishedPST:1SG all the time I knew how this boy was doing.’ (4)  … als ichs nun einmal sagte/ und sie deßwegen gestrichen wurden/ so wurden sie mir noch feinder und durffte mich nicht wol auf der Gassen sehen lassen … (Tennhardt 1710: 14) ‘… when I then confessed it and they were subsequently punished with blows, they became even more hostile to me and couldPST:1SG not let myself be seen in the street …’ These subject gaps in asymmetric coordination are examples of a syntactic phenomenon that has been argued to be a prototypical oral language feature by Ágel and Hennig (2006), while others have claimed the contrary and characterized it as a written one. It seems rather difficult to determine if these subject gaps were based on patterns of oral narratives or if they were a means of compacting information and involved more planning. Ágel and Hennig (2006: 56–57) and Hennig (2013: 374) emphasize the so-called aggregative structure of this construction. They underline the fact that spoken language features rely on the interaction between the communication partners in a situation of demonstratio ad oculos et ad aures (Bühler 1982/1934: 105), where the deictic center usually consists of the speaker and listener interacting at the time and place of the utterance. This means that a loose coupling or rather aggregation of syntagms provides enough information to semantically interpret an utterance in the correct way. Weak cohesion caused by subject gaps in asymmetric coordination forces the reader or listener to determine which semantic information has to be added. In a face-to-face situation it is no big challenge to do so, since the speaker may use extralinguistic means such as prosody, facial expressions or gestures to clarify his/her point of view, or the listener may ask for clarification if in doubt. Written syntagms however require much more contextual information to convey meaning. They have to be grammatically clarified in an unambiguous way in order to facilitate intelligibility regardless of time and place. The resulting grammatical disambiguation, where all required relational and categorical features are given, is called integration (cf. Ágel 2007).

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While Ágel and Hennig are convinced that the aggregative and less specified structure of weak cohesion and subject gaps is indicative of a spoken language feature, Lötscher (1995: 18) interprets the use of subject gaps as a prestigious literate marker, and he does so for the same reasons: Subject gaps are more demanding as they require more attention and effort of decoding than ‘complete’ constructions with subject pronouns. He even speaks of ‘costly signals’ that violate intelligibility (ibid.: 26). Additionally, the frequent occurrence of subject gaps alongside other prestigious markers103 speaks in favor of a stylistic means, and their use in chancery texts supports Lötscher’s view. Furthermore, it is worth noting that null subjects in ENHG are very often preceded by the coordinator und (which is also the case in the examples above). In Müller and Voeste (2009), we have argued that these subject gaps in asymmetric coordination with und might be related to inversion after und, a syntactic option that was already known in MHG and usually came hand in hand with a differing subject.104 Therefore, the change of grammatical subject might have been indicated by the direct succession of und + finite verb, be it with an accompanying postposed subject pronoun or without it. Even if one cannot prove that subject gaps in asymmetric coordination have to be labeled a written language feature, one can assume that the sequence und + finite verb was a widespread means to put the grammatical disruption into focus (cf. also Ágel 1999: 206–207 and 2000: 1876). On this basis, I want to argue that inversion after und in conjunction with subject gap was a development of the sixteenth century that provided the stylistic means of a prestigious literate marker. If this is true, we have to conclude that Frell and Tennhardt were both aware of the dissociation of spoken and written language. Literacy may even have had a special meaning for them, because reading and writing were part of the retreat techniques by which they could seclude themselves from a hostile social and religious environment.105 Both authors have written autobiographical records to explain and justify their economic hardships and their social decline. Prestigious literary markers could have helped them to withstand the accusations of their descendants.

103 Frell also used other prestigious signals such as binomial pairs: ringen unnd trachten (458), kranckh und versiech (459), leer unnd underwisung (460); auxiliary ellipsis: Was aber der handel und gspann gewesen Ø zwüschend mir und den predicanten … (468); or non-restrictive relative clauses that have a whole sentence as its antecedent (rather than a specific noun phrase): Unnd versumpt damit offt die lezgen [Lektionen, av] und die schůl, das mir dan träfenlich übel kam (460). 104 Cf. Paul (2007: § S 208) and also Reichmann and Wegera (1993: § S 239). 105 Cf. Brändle (2001) who entitled his paper with the citation Darmit ich aber auch etwaß freide hab auff erden, so thue ich schreiben undt Leßen (So that I also have a little delight on earth, I do write and read [my translation, av]).

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11.2.2 Afinite constructions The gain of prestige was also an important factor in the following case study of Dorothea Leporin (1715–1762), a physician’s daughter who in 1754, then under the married name of Erxleben, became the first female medical doctor in Germany. Leporin was a great exception among the women of her time, because she was allowed to attend private lessons with her brother, was trained in medicine by her father, and was even admitted as a doctoral candidate at the University of Halle by order of the King of Prussia, Frederick II. In 1742 she published the tract Gründliche Untersuchung der Ursachen, die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studiren abhalten ‘Thorough investigation of the causes preventing the female sex from studying’ (my translation, av), arguing that women’s education contributes to the perfection of character and religiousness and even leads to a better fulfillment of domestic duties. In order to put it to the test and to give proof of her own erudition, Leporin demonstrated that she was well versed in the traditional educational canon by citing Latin and French original quotes and by referring to male authority. But, in my opinion, the effort to prove her erudition is also reflected at the level of syntax.106 Leporin adhered to constructions that were typical of the complex syntax in seventeenth-century chancery documents, most notably to afinite constructions, where finite auxiliaries are omitted in subordinate clauses.107 Examples (5) and (6) show afinite constructions with (presumably) present perfect in the active and passive voice (erhalten Ø, geleuchtet Ø, beruffen worden Ø, angeführet worden Ø) in embedded clauses. Beyond that, example (6) illustrates the stylistic motive of avoiding the juxtaposition of two identical auxiliaries at clause boundaries (hervor geleuchtet hat, hat … zugeschrieben). (5)  Das Exempel der gelehrten Gozadina, welche nicht nur in Jure die Doctor-Würde erhalten Ø, sondern auch so gar zu einer öffentlichen Professorin in ihrer Facultaet beruffen worden Ø, und vieler anderer … beweisen das Gegentheil. (Leporin 1977/1742: 154) ‘The example of erudite Gozadina, who received the doctorate not only in Iure, but was also appointed even as a public professor in her faculty, and of many others ... prove the contrary.’ (6) Mons. Chapelain, bey dem überall kein allzu großer Geist hervor geleuchtet Ø, hat auch dem verständigsten Frauenzimmer nur eine halbe Vernunfft zugeschrieben … (Leporin 1977/1742: 35) ‘Mons. Chapelain, from whom in no respect an exceedingly brilliant mind shone forth, has attributed only half a portion of reason to even the most intelligent woman …’

106 Cf. Voeste (2000). 107 Cf. Admoni (1967: 190–192), Breitbarth (2005), Ebert (1986: 132–134), Konopka (1996: 140–142).

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Overall, Leporin’s tract shows a noticeable use of afinite constructions. She almost exclusively applies them instead of the tripartite form in the passive voice (finite haben/sein + worden + past participle); in quite a number of cases she also uses them with sein/haben + zu + infinitive (7). Apart from that – and this may be called anachronistic – she uses the afinite construction in 70% of cases of modal verbs with an infinitive (8), i.e. more than three times as frequently as her contemporaries.108 (7)  Aber diesem Einwurf ist … begegnet, und daselbst hinlänglich bedeutet worden,109 daß die Kräfte der Seele nicht in dem Gebäude des Cörpers zu suchen Ø. (Leporin 1977/1742: 27) ‘But this objection has been met …, and it has been sufficiently argued there that the faculties of the soul should not be sought in the edifice of the body.’ (8) Axiothea, … von welcher bekandt ist, daß Plato in ihrer Abwesenheit nicht Ø lesen wollen, sagend:110 Der Verstand, welcher es verstehen solte, wäre noch nicht gegenwärtig, machte es zwar nicht besser, denn sie frequentirte in Mannes Kleidern etliche Jahre Platonis Schule. (Leporin 1977/1742: 80) ‘Axiothea, of whom it is known that Plato did not want to give his lecture in her absence, saying: The mind apt to understand this is not yet present, did not do it a better way because she frequented Plato’s Academy in men’s apparel for quite a number of years.’ But why did Leporin decide in favor of the outdated afinite construction? During the 1740s, when Leporin published her tract, the Saxon school of poets had gained supra-regional importance with representatives such as the ‘German Swift’ Gottlieb Rabener (1714–1771), the theorist Johann Elias Schlegel (1719–1749) or, of course, the then most-read writer of his time, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–1769). It was a time of change: the new generation of German writers proclaimed an intelligible, natural and unsophisticated style of writing and denounced the servile imitation of the old, prestigious variants.111 However, Leporin chose the afinite construction typical of the previous baroque period in order to demonstrate that she was familiar with the traditional canon of education. This behavior was probably part of a strategy to compensate for social deprivation. Selecting traditional variants and excessively using old-fashioned stylistic means is still

108 In Breitbarth’s corpus, this afinite construction was rarely used. She counted only 10 occurrences between 1472 and 1782, half of which were found during the second half of the sixteenth century (cf. Breitbarth 2005: 165). Härd’s data show a mean frequency of 21 percent during the first half of the eighteenth century, when Leporin published her tract (cf. 1981: 104–132). 109 This example also shows coordination ellipses: ist→ … begegnet [worden], und daselbst [ist] hinlänglich bedeutet ←worden. 110 Note the gerund Leporin used here. In German, it became rare after 1500; cf. Ebert et al. (1993: § M 85). 111 Cf. Schwitalla (2002).

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a tried and tested strategy to prove one’s erudition in the context of social positioning. Even though Leporin’s behavior was backward-looking in this regard, it was forwardlooking in one crucial respect: Leporin showed a ‘modern’ language awareness that distinguished between levels of education (and probably also between different social classes or regional origins). In the context of written and spoken language, we can conclude that she adhered to the well-documented literary variant, while the newly proclaimed more natural style rather recommended spoken language features. The assumption of such a genuine style required the confidence to decide what could count as ‘natural’. Leporin preferably relied on old literary authorities, while others with more self-confidence followed the new motto of genuineness.

11.3 Morphology When discussing the access of lower social strata to literacy skills and education, one easily loses sight of the fact that the bourgeois classes in Germany were not part of the ruling elites either. Due to the feudalistic status quo, members of the bourgeoisie had no possibility of achieving any share in economic or political power. During the eighteenth century and particularly in the Protestant northern and eastern German states, the upwardly oriented bourgeois classes started to rely on academic education in order to achieve a career in the civil service. This newly educated citizenry aspired to distance itself from both French in its role as the accepted language of the nobility as well as from the language of the ‘mob’, above all from dialect, which, up to this time, had borne solely the tag of being regional but which now bore the extra tag of being social. Besides self-representation in art, literature and religion, the educated citizenry’s aspiration to compensate for their social inferiority led also to the use of language becoming a means of indicating social status and thus an instrument for social discrimination. Here it is the (self-)disciplinary nature of this development that should be emphasized. Even if the new bourgeois classes considered themselves intellectually superior, they were still dependent on the nobility’s support and good will.112 A striking example of the often desperate search for an appointment in the civil

112 See, for example, Adolph Knigge’s ironic comment in his novel Die Reise nach Braunschweig (1792: 82): „Die geneigten Leser werden es nicht ungütig aufnehmen, daß der junge Herr auf die Authorität von Fürsten und Edelleuten in wissenschaftlichen Dingen nicht viel hält. Theils hat er wohl nicht ganz Unrecht, theils ist es jetzt unter den jungen Gelehrten so eingeführt, daß sie alles tadeln, was die höhern Stände sagen und thun, außer wenn sie ihre Schriften loben. Doch geht dieser Widerwillen nicht so weit, daß besagte Gelehrte nicht, wo sichs thun läßt, von Fürsten und Edelleuten Schutz und Wohlthaten vorliebnehmen sollten.“ (The gentle reader will not take offense, that the young man does not think much of the authority of princes and noblemen in scientific matters. In part he may not be entirely wrong, and partly it is now so established among young scholars that they find fault with everything the upper classes say or do, except when they praise their writings. But this reluctance does not go so far that the said scholars should be dissatisfied with accepting the princes’ and noblemen’s protection and liberality. [My translation, av])

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service are the requests of Johann Friedrich Vulpius (1725–1786), father of Christiane Goethe. Having studied law, he unsuccessfully submitted applications for a position as a scribe in the chancellery in Weimar over the course of ten years. The more exasperated Vulpius became, the more submissive were his petitions: He speaks of tiefste Unterthänigkeit ‘deepest deference’, höchst flehentlich ‘most pleadingly’, ewig in tiefster Devotion verharrend ‘eternally persisting in deepest devotion’, or ewig in tiefster Erniedrigung ersterbend, literally ‘forever dying down in deepest humiliation’.113 But even when he was finally taken on, his worries did not cease. Sometimes the scribes were not paid at all, received their payments in grain or could not live on the small wages, ran into debts and had to sell their furniture.114 Against this backdrop, we must not forget that even though grammar skills and higher education had become a key factor for the bourgeoisie, their social position was still a precarious one for many of its members. The notion of language history from ‘below’ (in the sense of below the upper and upper middle classes of society)115 should not disguise the fact that the educational elite and the ruling elite were not congruent with each other.116 The social push factor of the upwardly oriented bourgeois classes played a key role in the standardization of German grammar during the eighteenth century. Down to the smallest details of morphology, the educated citizenry was eager to know the correct variants, as they did not trust spoken language (i.e., their own pronunciation and linguistic self-evaluation) any more:  uch gestehen vornehme und gelehrte Männer dieser Zeiten, daß es nöthig sey, A gewisse Nachricht zu haben, was in diesen Kleinigkeiten richtig sey: indem sie oft nicht wüßten, was für einen Endbuchstaben sie an die Adiectiua setzen sollten. (Martini 1739/1970: 124). ‘Noble and learned gentlemen nowadays admit that it is necessary to have some clarification of what is correct in these little details: because they often were at a loss as to which final letter to attach to the adjectives.’ (My translation, av) This is why eighteenth-century grammarians gained a larger influence than their predecessors. The increasing interest in grammatical details that went hand in hand with the emergence of an educated middle class, led to the request for an authoritative standard. Contrary to the seventeenth  century, in which the ‘tinkering’ of variants and the theoretical, rhetoric-inspired discussions had dominated, eighteenth-century grammars increasingly became reference works with the task of providing information

113 Cf. Damm (1998: 22–27). 114 Cf. Damm (1998: 28). 115 Cf. Elspaß (2007: 5). 116 For an overview of the eighteenth century cf. Martus (2015).

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on the correct variants. The earlier theoretical debates were replaced by an evaluation of variants according to their social prestige. It is interesting to note that the grammatical changes that were taking place at the time of intensive codification are particularly difficult to interpret: Did the grammarians simply document and codify the contemporary (spoken or written?) usage or did they initiate linguistic changes themselves? Historical sociolinguists are tempted to see prescriptive grammars as the decisive factor in linguistic change during the phase of codification and standardization. However, there is a risk of falling into the trap of the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc: Since the changes followed codification, they must have been caused by it. This is why Davies and Langer (2006: 278–282), who discussed the selection, non-selection or even de-selection of several morphosyntactic variants between 1600 and 2005, argue that standard German exists both as a set of rules in reference grammars and as a set of rules in the brains of its speakers. If the speakers perceive a construction as acceptable, they will not verify it against the grammatical codex. According to Davies and Langer (2006: 279), this is even a prerequisite of language change in standard varieties. Furthermore, we have to keep in mind that during the period before the accepted codex (and especially during the eighteenth century with grammars shooting up like mushrooms) there still remained the question of acceptability: Even if the speakers looked up the respective variants, they at times received conflicting advice or even indications that did not conform to their linguistic intuition. I would like to illustrate the problems of using grammars for self-instruction with two examples of adjective declension. My first example is concerned with attributive adjectives in genitive singular masculine/neuter, either with strong declension in es (9)/(11) or with weak declension in en (10)/(12). (9) Aber ist ein kleines, aber bei der heutiges Tages so sehr florierenden Medisance unentbehrliches Wörtgen117. (Lichtenberg 1994/1771?: 502) ‘But is a small, though, with such wickedness flourishing at present, indispensable word.’ (10) Doch ich ließ mein Wäschkistgen zurück; und wenn es der Becker nicht abgefodert hat, hab ich heutigen Tages noch einen Creditor in Berlin … (Bräker 2000/1789: 453) ‘Though I left my linen chest; and if the baker has not demanded it, I have, to this very day, a creditor in Berlin ...’

117 The ending -gen is an often used variant of -chen, which was deemed Upper Saxon. Cf. Wegera (2000), who claims that the loss of the gen-variant can be attributed to prescriptive grammarians.

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(11) Panthea, da sie ihn selbst nicht mehr erreichen konnte, folgte dem Wagen so lange, bis Abradates, da er es gewahr wurde, sie bat, gutes Muthes zu seyn und sich zu entfernen. (Wieland 2009/1774: 484) ‘Panthea, since she herself could not reach him anymore, followed the carriage until such a time as Abradates, perceiving it, asked her to take courage and to depart.’ (12) Misphragmutosiris hieß den König guten Muthes seyn … (Wieland 2012/1786: 140) ‘Misphragmutosiris bade the King to take courage ...’ Obviously, the older strong declension in the genitive singular masculine/neuter ending in (e)s after no article/preposition, which persists today in the case of most pronouns and the article ein(es), competed throughout the whole of the eighteenth century with the weak en ending, even within the works of one and the same writer (see examples [11] and [12]). The grammatical case continues to be indicated if the weak ending is used, since the substantives of the strong declension, masculine and neuter, still have the genitive inflection. A look into the grammars of the time, however, reveals that there was a clear opinion on the correctness of only one of these two variants: the strong declension in es. For more than a century, grammarians had argued that the strong declension was the correct choice even though euphony might be affected by the succession of two s-sounds (in the adjective and the noun). Their main argument here was analogy: The assumption of a post-positive article or of the transfer of the suffix from the determiner to the adjective necessarily had to be applied to the genitive too (des heutigen Tages – heutiges Tages). However, in the long run, the weak declension ending in en gained the upper hand and the use of the older strong declension declined. Obviously, this development cannot be attributed to the grammarians, and we have to look for other possible explanations. In this case, we can indeed try to explain the change by an internal cause: the transition from polyinflection to monoinflection, which was probably supported by spoken language. Historically speaking, the grammatical functions within the noun phrase had been divided in the course of several centuries: nouns increasingly indicated number distinction, determiners took over the labeling of case, and adjectives denoted gender information in the singular.118 Since the sixteenth century, this tendency of group inflection called monoinflection had been reinforced. In the case of adjective declension, monoinflection caused the attributive adjective to ‘react’ flexibly to the presence or absence of case markers and gender indicators in the noun phrase. Example (13) shows that case (dative) may be indicated by either the adjective or the determiner, but not by both. In example (14), case group (nominative/accusative) as well as gender (neuter) are labeled by the s-ending, be it with the determiner or the adjective.

118 In German, gender is neutralized in the plural.

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(13) altem Buch vs. olddat book vs.

dem/einem alten Buch thedat/adat old book

(14) das alte Buch vs. ein altes Buch theneut.sg.nom/acc old book vs. the oldneut.sg.nom/acc book Against this backdrop of group inflection, where the grammatical functions were distributed between noun, determiner and adjective, it seems comprehensible that the redundancy of a double case marking in genitive singular masculine/neuter (heutiges Tages, gutes Muthes) was removed. However, and here comes my second example, throughout the eighteenth century we still encounter polyinflection.119 Strong declension was often chosen after a determining unit (15), particularly after possessive pronouns and after kein- before nouns in nominative/accusative plural (16). (15) Die Gräfin aber, die leicht muthmassen konte, das man einen Cavallier, wie den Grafen von Rivera, nicht ohne die wichtigste Ursachen gefangen führen würde, geriet darauf in die allerheftigste Bewegungen. (Loën 1966/1742: 102) ‘The countess, however, easily conjecturing that a gentleman like the Count of Rivera would not be taken prisoner without very good reason, was induced to movements of a most violent nature.’ (16) Sie waren nicht weit mehr fortgefahren, so kamen sie in eine Gegend, wo die Natur schiene120 ihre seltsamste Schönheiten vereiniget zu haben. (Loën 1966/1742: 13) ‘They had not driven much further when they came to a region where nature seem’d to have united her rarest beauties.’ What was the grammarians’ advice in this case? They gave rather contradictory statements. On the one hand, they argued that the strong declension ending in e was against common practice (Freyer 1722), a mistake (Hempel 1754) or that it was only used in certain regions which could thus be recognized (Gottsched 1978/1762). On the other hand, they noted that the use of the weak declension in en was not correct anymore (Stieler 1968/1691), or that it was an absurd novelty of the Saxons (Dornblüth 1755). Only Antesperg (1749) stated that both endings could be chosen at will.121 Both examples of adjective declension show that speakers who wanted to look up a variant in eighteenth-century grammars were confronted with conflicting statements or did not receive forward-looking advice. Examples such as these make

119 For an evaluation of different corpora cf. Durrell et al. (2008), Solms and Wegera (1991) and Voeste (1999). 120 For a discussion of epithetic schwa cf. Imsiepen (1983), Voeste (2002). 121 Cf. Voeste (1999: 133–178).

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it difficult to believe in the decisive role of grammarians for the emergence of a New High German standard. But those who do believe in the grammarians’ influence will argue that external factors may sometimes have been overruled by internal factors. Functional explanations can again be applied here: Even though monoinflection was gaining acceptance during the first half of the eighteenth century, it competed with the endeavor to differentiate the case group of nominative/accusative from genitive and dative via different inflectional suffixes. The application of the older rule of polyinflection thus resulted in a consistent separation of the case groups by different inflectional endings in all types of declension, and therefore also in the plural of the weak and mixed declensions. Case group inflection is pertinent to support syntax: Only with different sets of suffixes is it possible to transpose subjects/direct objects and indirect objects (17). In the discussed case of polyinflection in the plural of the weak and mixed declensions, case group differentiation was even stronger, because it was supported by both the determiner and the adjective (18). (17) Sie zeigt vielendat Studenten vielenom/acc Dozenten. = Sie zeigt vielenom/acc Dozenten vielendat Studenten. ‘She shows many docents to many students.’ (18) Sie zeigt dendat vielendat Studenten dienom/acc vielenom/acc Dozenten. = Sie zeigt dienom/acc vielenom/acc Dozenten dendat vielendat Studenten. The discussed examples of adjective declension also reveal the above-mentioned difficulty in interpreting grammatical changes at a time of intensive codification. If the changes were adopted in accordance with the grammarians’ positive judgments, we assume that there is a link between language use and codification. Only when the changes are incompatible with the grammarians’ notions, we start looking for additional internal, functional explanations.122 Shouldn’t we also look for possible internal explanations even if the changes were adopted in accordance with the grammarians’ judgments? But there is more. The crux of the matter is that we will always find a possible internal explanation. In the discussed cases of adjective declension, I argued that monoinflection was responsible for the weak declension in the genitive singular and that polyinflection was the trigger of the strong declension in the nominative/ accusative plural. Why did the speakers and writers of the time decide in favor of monoinflection in one case and in favor of polyinflection in the other? Was

122 In most cases the grammarians could not explain the pros and cons of variants but made use of traditional evaluation criteria, the origins of which lie in rhetoric. The typical arguments refer to euphony, analogy, consuetudo (common use) or to the auctoritas or vetustas (the language as used by established writers).

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monoinflection reinforced by spoken language while polyinflection remained a more typical feature of written language? Why did the speakers eventually prefer heutigen Tages? If the principle of monoinflection asserted itself here within a group-inflecting nominal, the issue arises of why certain pronouns and the indefinite article were omitted from this process of change (dieses Tages, eines Tages). Did some inflectional forms become petrified by codification even in spoken language, while others were still free to change? All in all we can conclude that the relation between so-called internal and external influences on grammatical change, in particular during the eighteenth century, is a fundamental question still to be answered. As the new middle class relied heavily on education and supported the emergence of ‘subtle distinctions’, i.e., of finer-grained prestige markers, the role of the grammars must have become increasingly important. In any case, one can rightly claim that the large number of grammars and dictionaries cemented the gap between spoken and written language. Spoken variants became questionable, because in principle they were checkable – and that was often enough, no matter what was actually written down in the grammars. Nevertheless, linguistic changes may as well have resulted from a complicated tussle of several variants with different grammatical functions, where, for example, frequently occurring syntactical contexts triggered the increased use of the ‘winning’ variant. Historical sociolinguists have to disentangle this intricate ‘mess’ and continue to pursue both internal and external patterns of explanation.

11.4 Graphematics Spelling is the area where members of the precariat and the lower middle classes had the biggest problems to adjust to the requirements of literary standards, especially if they were not used to reading. Only those accustomed to reading for meaning, e.g., for religious reasons like Frell and Tennhardt, may have readily learnt to spell words without intending to do so. By comparison, syntactic and morphological features may in general have been acquired more easily since those structures could also be overheard when listening to texts read aloud. Historically speaking, we still know very little about the impact of literary skills on spoken language as well as about the interaction between the phonological and the morphological levels of spelling when it comes to unskilled writers. In the following, I will discuss some of these open questions using the example of a letter written by Christiane Vulpius (1765–1816), daughter of the above-mentioned Johann Friedrich Vulpius and long-time mistress and later wife of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (cf. the facsimile in Gräf 1921: before 97). Christiane Vulpius was born into a family of academics and craftsmen in Weimar, learnt to read and write, but – due to the father’s precarious financial position – most probably never received proper schooling or comparable vocational training. In order to contribute her share to improve the family’s financial situation, Vulpius had to work as a milliner until she became Goethe’s mistress in 1788. Despite her

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limited education, the style and textual form of her letters to Goethe show her as a confident writer, using text patterns in a personal way, including authenticity, irony and a convincing expression of feelings (see example [19]). Her spelling, however, did not match up to her stylistic and textual skills.123 Her spelling mistakes conform with those of unskilled writers and can be deemed typical for members of the precariat and the lower middle classes of her time, too. (19) Diens dages abenſt den 21 [Februar 1797] ich und dein liebes bübchen124 ſind glücklich und wohl wieder zu Hauße an gelangt die Ernesdiene und 2 Werners kam̄ usns bis umferſtät [Umpferstedt] Endgegen. Heude den ganzen dag habe ich mich [mit] 3 Der Reinlich keit deiner zimer beſchäftdig und bin in der Comedie geweßen. Morgen werden vom 4 g  anzen Hauße die fohrhänge gewaßen ud den Donners dag gebügelt und über Haubt Habe ich mir 5 d  ieße Woche mir vor genom Daß Haus F von boden bis ruder in Ordung zu brüfen den Sondag mich 6 m  it dem Rohten Gel*t zu buzen und küftdüge Woche die auf ſäzgen in ordnung zu brigen und 7 a  ls den daß übrge wird ſich finden. Stel Dir vor wie lieb dich deine bey den Haßen Haben wie du in 8 K  äutſchau [Kötschau] von uns wehe wahrſt gin mir raus und ſagn auf dem Berg deine Kuße fahren da 9 f  ingen mir alebey eisns an zu heulen und ſahten bey de es währ unds ſo wuderlich. der klin läſt dich 10 grüßen er iſt heude by Gakala geweßen 11 Mide wohe den 22 12 H  ir ſüke ich dir was du ver langſt die Ur daß Puch buch und 6 Pudalgen Wein E*s folgt auch 13 d  as Gelt ich habe 10 Stück laub thlr raus genom weill der Dabezier vor PfehrdeHarr leinwant Gart 14 *  *ä nägell und nacher lohn vor die Stühel und daß Kanabe 14 bis 15 Dahler haben will ich habe es 15 n  ach gerchent und ſie kom uns doch nicht So deuer wie die vorüch gen. ich wüſche Dir daß der Her 16 125 v  on Sch Sckenfuhs [Schönfuß] bey Dier ein kährn möchte ud Dir die aller beſte und forderſelichſte 17 laune zum Gedicht mit brigen 18 leb wohl und behalt lieb 19 1



20

Dein Glein nes nadur Weßen126

123 The editor of Goethe’s and Vulpius’ correspondence corrected the spelling of her letters in order to put her in the best light, arguing Der Stil ist der Mensch, aber nicht: Die Orthographie ist der Mensch ‘style is the man himself, but not: spelling is the man himself’, quoting the famous le style est l’homme même from the French naturalist Leclerc De Buffon (1707–1788) (Gräf 1921: 15). 124 Bübchen means their son Julius August Walther, born in 1789. 125 Term of endearment for Goethe’s male member. 126 Facsimile in Gräf (1921: before 97). The eve of Tuesday the 21st [February 1797] me and your dear little boy have arrived home again[,] happily and well[.] Ernesdiene and Werners came to meet us at Umpferstedt. All day today I was occupying myself [with] the cleanliness of your rooms and went to the theatre. Tomorrow all of the curtains in the house will be washed and ironed on the Thursday and in all I am proposing to myself to bring order to the house from the attic on down[,] on Sunday to adorn myself with the red dress and next week to put in order the ornaments[,] and as to all else[,] it will become clear in time. Imagine how much your two bunny rabbits love you[:] when you had left us in Kötschau we went out and from the mountain saw your carriage driving [away] wherefore the both of us started crying and both [of us] said how odd we were feeling. The little one sends his regards[,] he’s been at Gakala’s today Wednesday the 22

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My first point is concerned with the interactions between spoken and written language. It goes without saying that dialect features and phonological peculiarities are repeatedly reflected in spelling according to the motto ‘write as you speak’. This strategy, called the phonological principle, is essential to alphabetic script and can be described as the first guideline for novice readers and writers. We can easily recognize dialect spellings such as dages3 instead of tages, brüfen6 instead of prüfen or Glein nes20 in place of Kleines (lenition), Comedie4 instead of Comödie, Sckenfuhs17 instead of Schönfuß (delabialization), or ſahten10 for /x/ in sagten, vorüch gen16 for /ç/ or /j/ in vorigen (spirantization), which are all typical of the Thuringian dialect spoken in Weimar.127 In addition, we note Vulpius’ difficulties in reproducing corresponding unstressed syllables where lax vowels can be reduced and centralized or are represented by a syllabic sonorant: küftdüge7 instead of künftige (slight centralization), ginØ9 [gɪŋŋ̩] instead of gingen, vor genomØ6 [gənɔmm̩] in place of vorgenommen (elision of /n̩/ or assimilation to [ŋ̩] or [m̩] respectively). As Vulpius also omits letters, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between phonologically motivated spellings and letter omissions occurring during the writing process. Unambiguous omissions can be found in the sequence of and look-alike , where is often missing: u[n]d5, ru[n]der6, Ordnu[n]g6, kü[n]ftdüge7, wu[n]derlich10, wü[n]ſche16. Furthermore, syllables can be skipped (alebey[de]10) or letter strings may be left out when repeated: Dabezier[er]14. But what about missing vowels in examples such as übr[i]ge8, ger[e]chent16, kl[e]in[e]10? Omitted vowels are well known as a characteristic of children’s consonantal skeletal spellings. Learners are less aware of vowels because the airflow can pass through the mouth without hindrance, while consonants are articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, which is easily noticeable. Vowel omissions can therefore be subsumed either under the category of phonologically motivated spellings (e.g., in syncopes or monophthongizations) or under the category of slips of the pen (which is more probable when vowels with primary or secondary stress are omitted). Here, it still needs to be established with regard to texts of unskilled writers whether vowels are more often omitted than consonants. In either case, phonetic features (no hindrance of the airflow) could be reflected in written word forms and even be responsible for these ‘slips of the pen’. Other prevalent features are the re-arranging of letters into more frequently occurring graphotactic sequences (abenſt1 instead of Abends), which reveals a nascent familiarity with tagmatics, and

Herewith I’m sending you what you ask[ed] for[,] the watch[,] the book and 6 bottles of wine[.] The money will follow as well[,] I have taken from it 10 pieces laub thlr [Saxon currency] because the upholsterer wants for horse-hair[,] canvas[,] strap and nails[,] and then as payment for the chairs and the settee 14 to 15 thalers[.] I have calculated it and yet they will not be as dear [expensive] as the previous ones. I pray that Mister von Schönfuß may turn up at yours and bring you the very best mood for the poem fare well and keep on loving your little creature of nature 127 For details of Thuringian dialects see Kürsten (1930) and Rosenkranz (1964).

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the omission of consonants at word boundaries (nach[h]er15) or in complex clusters beſchäftdig[t]4.128 Of particular interest are hypercorrections and syllabic spellings with silent . Vulpius chooses the correct spelling with in wohl2, fahren9, lohn15, ein kährn17, and she also inserts it according to the systemic rules but against common practice in fohrhänge5, wahrſt9, währ10, Pfehrde14 and Dahler15. Although she is mistaken about its position in Rohten7 and wrongly applies it to Fuß in Sckenfuhs17, the attempt to insert a silent letter proves the linguistic awareness of an orthographic standard. Vulpius might even have been mindful of regional peculiarities as she writes ſüke13 instead of schicke or förichen in place of Ferien.129 Even though these examples can be interpreted as labializations, I would argue in favor of hypercorrections: The Thuringian dialect is better known for its delabializations (schen, Leffel, grin, Kiche) than for labializations. Besides, Pudalgen13 instead of Bouteillen or kram instead of Graben as well as Abordiere130 in place of Ouvertüre may also point in the direction of hypercorrections and indicate a specific knowledge and linguistic awareness of ‘dialect mistakes’. But the interactions between spoken and written language in the socio-historical perspective are perhaps most challenging when it comes to possible repercussions of (il-)literacy on pronunciation. Löffler (2002) argues that (functional) illiterates today have limited verbal competences because they lack the differentiation and elaboration (in the sense of ausbau language) that usually accompany literacy in standard languages. As the participants of her study were not able to reanalyze and recode their speaking vocabulary via spelling, they showed indistinct pronunciations or mispronunciations of words such as Werk (Wirt), Porree (Püree), momental (momentan), Adektiv (Additiv) or Tobolenzen (Turbulenzen). This is exactly what we find in written form in Vulpius’ letters, especially in her foreign-language vocabulary of borrowed words: ankaſſirt (engagiert), Arckam (Organ), konsdannigen (Kastanien) or in native Emliſer Barreider (Englischer Bereiter, trick rider). Therefore, I want to argue that literacy and spelling in particular played an equally important role for the proficient mastery of spoken language in the historical perspective. As soon as the dissociation of spoken and written language had been established, orality became ‘imprinted’ by spelling habits. In the intellectual and academic discourses of the aspiring bourgeoisie of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, any mistake could and would have been noticed. Christiane Vulpius, who was allowed to make public appearances after being married to Goethe in 1806, suffered from the mockery and

128 As -ig [iç] is pronounced [ʃ] in Weimar, beſchäftdig may have resulted in the cluster [fdʃt] or [fdʃd]. So the dental consonant may have been omitted already in the phonetic correlate. 129 All examples without subscripts are taken from Gräf (1921: 15). 130 In the Thuringian dialect intervocalic [b] is spirantized.

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jibes of the ladies in Weimar. We can assume that a restricted proficiency at least in view of her academic vocabulary might have aggravated her visits to Weimar salons. My second point concerns the interplay between the phonological and the morphological levels of spelling. Matching phonemes and graphemes by sounding out one’s own speech is just one side of the coin when learning to write. The other side is the handling of sight chunks and sight words that are memorized as a whole and may be based on morphemes, but possibly also on syllables. To date, we know next to nothing about the role of morphemes in the unsupervised acquisition of spelling. Historical texts from the lower classes may provide important input on possible individual approaches and, subsequently, on the more common strategies used by novice writers. Vulpius’ letter gives us a first impression of her morphological insight into word structures. We can assume that she had memorized by sight high frequency morphemes and short words as a whole. These mainly included prepositions (auf, bey, mit, über, vor), as can be demonstrated by the separate spelling of words and compounds that are usually joined into one word: auf ſäzgen7, bey de10, mit brigen18, über Haubt5, vor genom6.131 It is interesting to note that she singled out derivational morphemes (Reinlich keit4) and wrote down separate inflectional morphemes in their syllabic context (vorüch gen16, Glein nes20). The doubling of ch+g and n+n indicates an accurate syllabic analysis, while keeping the morphemes vorig and klein intact. Vulpius’ spelling of complex words reveals a morphological awareness that interacted with the phonological principle and sometimes contradicted it. A thorough investigation of these interplays in historical texts should also include word length. Vulpius chose the separate spelling in ten-lettered Diens dages1 and Donners dag5, but she wrote the shorter, six-lettered compound Sondag6 in the joined form. Spelling features as well as stylistic and textual habits are an important window through which to glimpse the linguistic awareness of inexperienced writers of the past. Hypercorrections may for instance indicate the awareness of different varieties of language, especially of the dialect as a non-standard variety. Once this awareness had started to unfold and develop through the analysis of written word forms, this may have progressed to an increasing differentiation and elaboration of spelling and literacy, but also to the realization of one’s own limited verbal competences. Subsequently, this may have resulted in fear of failure or in a refusal to write at all. Without the adoption of literacy, social participation will have been limited and key functions of writing could not be experienced. In the case of Christiane Vulpius, literacy was an important means to express her feelings and to keep in contact with Goethe over longer periods of time. Nevertheless, we can assume on the basis of her misspellings that her literacy skills were not proficient enough to reanalyze her own pronunciation, at least with regard to her academic vocabulary. Her presumed mispronunciations did not make

131 Nevertheless, Vulpius still did not analyze the derivational structure of Vorhänge (fohrhänge5).

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her days easier when confronted with an unwelcoming bourgeois environment. Even though she became ‘Frau Geheimrat von Goethe’ in 1806, she was never accepted by the condescending ladies of the Weimar salons.

11.5 Conclusions My case studies in syntax, morphology and graphematics suggest that the speakers in early modern times were indeed aware of the dissociation of spoken and written language. The widening gap between orality and literacy had an impact on the precariat classes but also on the upwardly oriented educated bourgeoisie that wanted to achieve a career in the civil service. As they perceived the differentiated social requirements, speakers became ‘disloyal’ to their primary varieties. They deliberately used prestigious older variants typical of written texts and started to consult reference books in search of the supposedly ‘correct’ variants. Struggling to cope with new verbal requirements, they began to mistrust their own linguistic evaluation and pronunciation, particularly in relation to the ‘small details’, namely inflectional morphology and, of course, spelling. It seems paradoxical, but the unfolding literacy brought about the realization of their own limited verbal competences. As regards writing, this may subsequently have resulted in fear of failure or in the refusal to write at all. I have argued that some misspellings may indicate the speaker’s difficulties in mastering the academic vocabulary, and that they must have mispronounced borrowed or rarely used words, so that the lack of familiarity with literacy did indeed affect spoken language. These repercussions may have had an impact on social acceptance and approval in an increasingly educated bourgeois society. However, limited spelling skills do not automatically indicate that key functions of writing could not be experienced. My case studies show that even writers from the precariat class achieved literacy to such an extent that they held the means to express their feelings in precise terms and that they were able to use reading and writing as a form of retreat in a hostile environment.

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List of Figures Figure 1. Contrast illustrated by example (3) 29 Figure 2. Contrast illustrated by example (5) 32 Figure 3. Antithesis illustrated by example (7) 33 Figure 4. Contrast illustrated by example (8) 34 Figure 5. Map of Catalonia and Schleswig (late nineteenth century) 83 Figure 6. Average results for th-pronouns and Inanimate-which in the Paston family members per gender and variables (percentages of the innovating variants) 124 Figure 7. Results in the Paston family members per informants and variables (percentages of the innovating variants) 124 Figure 8. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Agnes Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span 128 Figure 9. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margaret Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span 128 Figure 10. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Elizabeth Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span 129 Figure 11. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms of her letters preserved along her life span 129 Figure 12. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery Paston: percentages of þ-forms and th-forms per letter 131 Figure 13. Average results for grammatical and orthographic variables in the Paston family members per gender (percentages of the innovating variants) 134 Figure 14. Average results for th-pronouns, Inanimate-which and th-spelling in the Paston family members per gender and variables (percentages of the innovating variants) 134 Figure 15. Global results in the Paston family members per informants and variables (percentages of the innovating variants) 135 Figure 16. Words with /iː/ < ME /eː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication 173 Figure 17. Words with /ɛː/ or /eː/ < ME /ɛː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication 176 Figure 18. Words with /uː/ < ME /oː/ in closed syllables: tendencies of vowel length indication 178 Figure 19. Spelling patterns in do: tendencies 179 Figure 20. Proportion of single negation with 84 individuals from the 1660s/1670s (LAL Corpus) with ≥ 5 tokens of negation 207

List of Tables Table 1. Letters by members of the community of practice in the Stonor collection (1463-1472) 58 Table 2. Keywords and positive keyness in the letters by the community of practice (compared to the late ME section of CEEC) 60 Table 3. Most significant n-grams in the letters by the community of practice 61 Table 4. Education of craftsmen, tradesmen and copy holders in seventeenth-century England (data from Cressy, 1993: 315, and Wheale, 1999: 35) 114 Table 5. Data on the Paston family members as informants 117 Table 6. Informants and Letters in the Paston Collection 119 Table 7. Text Types in the Paston Collection 119 Table 8. Scribes in the Paston Letters (adapted from Bergs 2005: 79) 120 Table 9. 3rd person plural pronouns paradigm (all genders) 121 Table 10. Results for some grammatical variables in Bergs (2005: Tables 19 and 76) 123 Table 11. Results of the th-spelling in the female Pastons 127 Table 12. Results of the usage of the spelling variable (th) in Margery’s letters 130 Table 13. Comparison of results for grammatical and orthographic variables in male and female Pastons 132 Table 14. Comparison of autograph and dictated letters (adapted from Bergs, 2005: 128, Table 38) 135 Table 15. Indian Hindi dialects and Fiji Hindi definite future suffixes (from Siegel [1987: 115]) 148 Table 16. The analyzed editions of The Schoole of Vertue 167 Table 17. Words with /iː/ < ME /eː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication 173 Table 19. Words with /ɛː/ or /eː/ < ME /ɛː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication 176 Table 20. Words with /uː/ < ME /oː/ in closed syllables: distribution of vowel length indication 177 Table 21. Spelling patterns in do: distribution 178 Table 22. S-curve stages (single negation) with 84 individuals from the 1660s/1670s (LAL Corpus) with ≥ 5 tokens of negation, across region 208 Table 23. Single and bipartite negation with two individuals from the 1660s (LAL Corpus), across construction type 210 Table 24. Self-references in Emin’s letters 225 Table 25. Conventional and unconventional salutations in Emin’s letters 226 
Table 26. -ED variation in L2 and L1 English: Emin and Bluestocking Corpus 230 Table 27. Modals + negative auxiliary do: full and contracted forms in L2 and L1 231

Index Affective language 227 antithesis 9, 19, 24, 33, 36, 40-42, 44, 144, 262 attrition 16, 143, 151, 162-163 authorship 11, 108-110, 112, 114-115, 121, 125, 136 Catalonia 10, 81-95, 102-106, 262 community of practice 9, 46-49, 52-61, 63-66, 82, 235, 263 contrast 9, 11, 19-20, 24, 26-27, 29-32, 34, 36, 41-42, 59-60, 62, 88, 94, 97, 169-170, 174, 183, 219, 231, 233, 240, 262 critical discourse analysis 19, 26, 43, 125 cultural transfer 219, 227 diaglossia 12, 194-197, 200, 211, 214, 217 Dialect death 11, 143, 160, 162 dialect mistakes 237, 240, 255 diglossia 12, 17, 86-89, 94-95, 194-197, 200-201, 214-217 Dutch 3, 12-13, 15, 17, 149, 158, 194-196, 198-203, 205, 213-219, 236 Early Modern English 12, 65, 140-141, 165, 173, 175, 177, 180, 187, 192, 217, 235, 260 early printers 66, 165, 170, 182 ego documents 10, 67, 80 emigration 67-68, 70-71, 73 empirical validity 108-109, 194 gender 7, 11, 22, 43, 46-48, 64, 66, 108, 112, 114-115, 124, 134, 136, 138-141, 151, 158, 160, 201, 209, 211, 249, 262 graphematics 13, 237, 252, 257 historical linguistics 1-2, 4, 7-8, 14-19, 108, 140, 142, 145, 163, 192, 198, 216-217, 235, 260 historical sociolinguistics 1-6, 8, 10, 14-18, 26, 46-47, 49, 65, 80, 83, 85, 106, 108-109, 111, 137-142, 192, 196-197, 215-219, 236 Hypercorrections 237, 240, 255-256 identity 5, 7-8, 16, 23, 46-47, 49-53, 63-64, 66, 81, 88, 90-91, 96-97, 101, 105, 139, 142-145, 149, 151, 154-157, 161, 196, 218-220, 224, 227-229, 232-233, 235-236 ideology 8, 19, 21-22, 24-26, 40, 42-44, 77, 84-85, 109-110, 212-213, 215-216 individual variation 12, 194, 201, 203, 205-206 inflectional morphology 13, 237, 257 koineisation 143, 145-148, 151 corpus planning 83-84, 88-94, 103-104

Language and affect 219, 235 language history from below 7, 198, 240 language ideologies 10, 81-83, 87-90, 111, 140 language policies 10, 17, 81-82, 87, 89-90, 99, 103 Late Modern English 10, 13, 15, 64, 67, 80, 219, 228, 235-236 lexical variation and change 143, 150 linguistic practice 8, 19, 22, 131 Mechanisms of expressing contradiction 19, 26, 30, 34, 37 Middle English 7, 9, 12, 46, 59, 61, 63, 65, 116, 121-122, 126, 137-139, 141-142, 172-173, 175, 177, 180, 188, 192 multilingualism 2, 7, 14, 81, 196 nationalism 10, 81-82, 84-85, 87-94, 96-97, 100, 104-107, 213-214 nation-state 103 negation 12-13, 33, 139, 194, 200-218, 262-263 non-standard phenomena 237 orthographic variables 11-12, 131-134, 165, 167, 192, 262-263 orthography 11-12, 66, 93, 96, 135, 144, 165-166, 185-186, 191-193, 218, 223, 237 Paston Letters 11, 14, 59, 108, 115-116, 120, 137-138, 141, 263 persuasive discourse 67 phraseological units 219, 232 pronunciation 11, 93, 149, 151, 175, 192-193, 199, 230, 237, 240, 247, 255-257 reference terms 219-220, 224-225, 227, 232, 234 representativeness 70, 108-110, 115, 136 rhetorical relations 9, 19-20, 24, 41 Schleswig 10, 81-85, 94-95, 97-100, 102, 104-106, 262 Scots 1, 65, 79-80, 143-145, 147, 149-150, 152, 160-161, 163 SLA 219, 222, 233 social networks 5-6, 13-14, 17, 25, 46-47, 67, 137 sociolinguistics 1-8, 10, 14-19, 26, 44, 46-47, 49, 65, 80, 83, 85, 100, 106, 108-109, 111, 137-143, 163-164, 192, 196-197, 215-219, 222, 236, 264 speech acts 9, 19-20, 23, 27-28, 31-33, 40-42, 45, 80

References  spelling 11-14, 59, 66-67, 76, 121, 126-131, 141, 165, 167-168, 170-172, 174-187, 190-193, 199, 213, 217-219, 222-223, 230-231, 234-235, 237-240, 252-257, 260, 262-263 state-nation 11, 102, 105 Stonor Letters 9, 15, 46, 49, 51-52, 62-65 style 8, 22-24, 26, 42-43, 45-46, 48, 63, 65, 82, 137-138, 219-220, 223-227, 230, 232, 234, 238-240, 245-246, 253

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substandardization 195 supralocalization 13, 194-195, 210, 212-215 supraregionalization 195, 212 syntax 1, 13, 20, 80, 237, 240, 244, 251, 257-260 third-wave approach 9, 47, 63 uniformitarian principle 5-6, 14, 48, 111, 136