Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:59:16.943Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English, 1300–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 236. $59.95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2002

Richard W. Bailey
Affiliation:
English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003, USA, [email protected]

Extract

This important book – hereafter DSE – demonstrates for all linguists how an insightful observation by a young scholar can question basic assumptions and fondly held beliefs. In 1996, Laura Wright published an essay in a Festschrift for Eric Stanley in which she pointed to the fragility of the received wisdom that the modern prestige dialect of Britain emerged from a medieval “Central Midland” progenitor brought to London from the north and promulgated through the scribes in the Court of Chancery. In 1997, a conference was held in Cambridge to pursue the questions she had raised; then, in 1999, further discussion at the University of London led to this volume.

Type
REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)