Cover not available
Part of
Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective
Edited by Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 3] 2014
► pp. 103–128

Norms and usage in seventeenth-century English

ORCID logo
In the course of the seventeenth century English spelling became largely fixed in print, and technical and borrowed lexis continued to be codified in dictionaries. Although proposals for ‘improving’ the English language appeared towards the end of the century, contemporary grammar books did not prescribe usage. This chapter discusses these diverse processes, relating them to their advocates and comparing emergent norms with the information that we have on the changing patterns of actual usage. The chapter draws on the framework of language policy proposed by Spolsky (2012) in distinguishing between actual usage, language attitudes and language management. It illustrates how usage can give rise to value-laden norms, which may be imposed on language users through various channels and with varying success.
Published online: 19 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.3.05nev
References (53)
References
Adamson, Sylvia. 1999. Literary language. In Lass (ed.), 539–653.
Baines, Paul. 2004. The long 18th century. London: Hodder Arnold.Google Scholar
Barber, Charles. 1997. Early Modern English. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, Alistair, Paul Rayson & Dawn Archer. 2009. Word frequency and key word statistics in corpus linguistics. Anglistik 20.41–67.Google Scholar
Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable. 2013. A history of the English language. 6th ed. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bullokar, John. 1616. An English expositor. London: A. Crooke.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan & Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English dialogues: Spoken interaction in writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Defoe, Daniel. 1697. An essay upon projects. London: Tho. Cockerill.Google Scholar
Devitt, Amy. 1989. Standardizing written language: Diffusion in the case of Scotland 1520–1659. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dons, Ute. 2004. Descriptive adequacy of Early Modern English grammars. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dryden, John. 1672. The conquest of Granada by the Spaniards in two parts. London: T.N. for Henry Herringman.Google Scholar
Gil, Alexander. 1619. Logonomia anglica. London: J. Beale. In Bror Danielsson & Arvid Gabrielson (eds.), Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica (1619). 2 vols. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Goodland, Giles. 2011. ‘Strange deliveries’: Contextualising Shakespeare’s first citations in the OED. In Mireille Ravassat & Jonathan Culpeper (eds.), Stylistics and Shakespeare’s language, 8–33. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. 1991. Introduction to Early Modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Einar. [1966] 1997. Language standardization. In Nicolas Coupland & Adam Jaworski (eds.), Sociolinguistics, 341–352. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hope, Jonathan. 2000. Rats, bats, sparrows and dogs: Biology, linguistics and the nature of Standard English. In Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English 1300 –1800, 49–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kytö, Merja. 1991. Variation and diachrony, with early American English in focus: Studies on can/may and shall/will. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja & Päivi Pahta. 2012. Evidence from historical corpora up to the twentieth century. In Nevalainen & Traugott (eds.), 123–133.
Lancashire, Ian. 2006. Introduction. Lexicons of Early Modern English. [URL].Google Scholar
Lass, Roger (ed.). 1999. The Cambridge history of the English language, Vol. 3, 1476–1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meurman-Solin, Anneli & Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.). 2013. Principles and practices for the digital editing and annotation of diachronic data (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 14). Helsinki: VARIENG. [URL].Google Scholar
Michael, Ian. 1970. English grammatical categories and the tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. 1999. Authority in language: Investigating standard English. 3rd ed. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Moessner, Lilo. 2000. Grammatical description and language use in the seventeenth century. In Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg & C.B. McCully (eds.), Generative theory and corpus studies: A dialogue from 10 ICEHL, 395–416. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Chris. 2012. Perceptions of dialects: Changing attitudes and ideologies. In Nevalainen & Traugott (eds.), 457–469.Google Scholar
Mulcaster, Richard. 1582. The first part of the elementarie. London: T. Vautroullier.Google Scholar
Neuhaus, H.J. 1971. Towards a diachronic analysis of vocabulary. Cahiers de lexicologie 18.28–42.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. 1999. Early Modern English lexis and semantics. In Lass (ed.), 332–458.
. 2000. Processes of supralocalisation and the rise of standard English in the Early Modern period. In Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg & C.B. McCully (eds.), Generative theory and corpus studies: A dialogue from 10 ICEHL, 329–371. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
. 2003. English. In Ana Deumert & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic standardizations: Past to present, 127–156. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. An introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
. 2012. Variable focusing in English spelling between 1400 and 1600. In Susan Baddeley & Anja Voeste (eds.), Orthographies in Early Modern Europe, 127–165. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg.1994. Its strength and the beauty of it: the standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English. In Dieter Stein & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.), Towards a Standard English 1600–1800, 171–216. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. 2006. Standardisation. In Richard Hogg & David Denison (eds.), A history of the English language, 271–311. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Elizabeth Traugott (eds.). 2012. The Oxford handbook of the history of English. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
OED = Simpson, John A. & E.S.C. Weiner (eds.). 1989. The Oxford English dictionary. 2nd ed. Additions 1993–7, ed. J. Simpson, E. Weiner and M. Proffitt. 3rd ed. (in progress) Mar. 2000–, ed. John Simpson. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [URL].Google Scholar
Phillips, Edward. 1658. The new world of English words. London: Nath. Brooke.Google Scholar
Puttenham, George. 1589. The arte of English poesie. London: R. Field.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 1998. Social factors and pronominal change in the seventeenth century: The Civil War effect? In Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.), Advances in English historical linguistics, 361–388. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Rayson, Paul, Dawn Archer, Alistair Baron, Jonathan Culpeper & Nicholas Smith. 2007. Tagging the Bard: Evaluating the accuracy of a modern POS tagger on Early Modern English corpora. In M. Davies, P. Rayson, S. Hunston & P. Danielsson (eds.), Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference: CL2007. Lancaster University: UCREL.Google Scholar
Reay, Barry. 1998. Popular cultures in England 1550 –1750. London & New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 1997. The pronominalization of one . In Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.), Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English, 87–143. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2013. Using the OED quotations database as a diachronic corpus. In Manfred Krug & Julia Schlüter (eds.), Research methods in language variation and change, 136–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Vivian. 1999. Orthography and punctuation. In Lass (ed.), 13–55.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties of English around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scragg, D.G. 1974. A history of English spelling. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Sönmez, Margaret. 2001. The influence of early monolingual dictionaries and word lists on the standardisation of English spelling. Anglia 119.207–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard. 2012. What is language policy? In Bernard Spolsky (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of language policy, 3–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sundby, Bertil, Anne Kari Bjørge & Kari E. Haugland. 1991. A dictionary of English normative grammar, 1700–1800 (DENG). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vorlat, Emma. 1979. Criteria of grammaticalness in 16th and 17th century English grammar. Leuvense Bijdragen 68.129–140.Google Scholar
Wallis, John. 1653. Grammatica linguæ anglicanæ. Oxford: Leon. Lichfield.Google Scholar
Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. 2006. Prescriptivism and preposition stranding in eighteenth-century prose. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 6. (29 January, 2014.) [URL]Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Currie, Oliver
2022. Vloga Svetega pisma v procesih jezikovne standardizacije na primeru valižanščine. Jezik in slovstvo 67:1-2 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
Currie, Oliver
2023. Sociocultural Change and the Development of Vernacular Languages in Early Modern Europe. Linguistica 63:1-2 ► pp. 5 ff. DOI logo
Priiki, Katri
2022. Changes in the proverb formula in Finnish Bibles from 1642 to 1992. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 8:2 ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy
2021. Sociolinguistique historique et suivi de l’évolution des langues : sources, types et genres de textes. Cahiers internationaux de sociolinguistique N° 18:1 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Rutten, Gijsbert
2016. Historicizing diaglossia. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20:1 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.