Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part one Theory and methodology: approaches to studying the standardisation of English
- Part two Processes of the standardisation of English
- 7 Standardisation and the language of early statutes
- 8 Scientific language and spelling standardisation 1375–1550
- 9 Change from above or from below? Mapping the loci of linguistic change in the history of Scottish English
- 10 Adjective comparison and standardisation processes in American and British English from 1620 to the present
- 11 The Spectator, the politics of social networks, and language standardisation in eighteenth-century England
- 12 A branching path: low vowel lengthening and its friends in the emerging standard
- Index
9 - Change from above or from below? Mapping the loci of linguistic change in the history of Scottish English
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part one Theory and methodology: approaches to studying the standardisation of English
- Part two Processes of the standardisation of English
- 7 Standardisation and the language of early statutes
- 8 Scientific language and spelling standardisation 1375–1550
- 9 Change from above or from below? Mapping the loci of linguistic change in the history of Scottish English
- 10 Adjective comparison and standardisation processes in American and British English from 1620 to the present
- 11 The Spectator, the politics of social networks, and language standardisation in eighteenth-century England
- 12 A branching path: low vowel lengthening and its friends in the emerging standard
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The early history of some geographical varieties of English is in the process of being rewritten as a result of there now being a much wider range of texts available for tracing diachronic developments in greater detail than before. As compared with research based on the literary canon, studies extracting data from non-literary genres such as legal documents, handbooks, scientific treatises, narratives of a more private or informal nature, for instance diaries and autobiographies, and official and private letters, have provided evidence of a lower degree of uniformity and unidirectionality in patterns reflecting variation and change; in fact a high degree of heterogeneity and quite complex processes of change have also emerged in regional and local varieties used in relatively restricted areas. This is of course what compilers of diachronic computer-readable corpora have had as their working hypothesis. Moreover, with the new generation of carefully structured diachronic corpora (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (eds.) 1996, Meurman-Solin forthcoming b, c), the application of some of the methods of modern sociolinguistics to diachronic data now seems possible and reasonable.
The case of the Scottish English variety is particularly interesting because of the varying social, cultural and political pressures created on the one hand by the local and regional interests, and on the other hand by England, and also by the two nations' somewhat different contacts with the Continent.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts, pp. 155 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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