Edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 358] 2022
► pp. 263–286
This chapter extends the discussion of second-person pronouns and of eighteenth-century language norms by examining three playwrights’ use of you was in the period before its proscription by grammarians like Robert Lowth (1762). Our analysis corroborates historical sociolinguistic surveys by Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2002) and Laitinen (2009) that identify you was as informal/familiar before 1762. We also show that you was was salient and associated with social lowness in comedies well before it was stigmatized by prescriptivists. Finally, while acknowledging the distinctness of theatrical language, we have identified one useful general property of comedy and especially romantic comedy. The stylized opposition between comic characters (particularly lovers) can signal sociolinguistic salience, here of you was/were by 1747.