Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues

This book is a corpus-based study examining thou and you in three speech-related genres from 1560–1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when you became dominant to when thou became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of thou and you. Previous research on thou and you has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.

Minna Nevala, University of Helsinki, in the Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Vol. 11:2 (2010):
Terry Walker's 'Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues' (2007) is an impressive in-depth study on pronoun in early English trials, depositions and comedies. Mainly drawing material from A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (CED) [...] the book is a welcome addition to the extensive continuum of historical linguistic studies concentrating on the use of thou and you. Walker's book is a meticulous and comprehensive study. Its major strength lies in the way in which quantitative analysis is combined with, and supported by, qualitative examination of the context. With ample use of examples drawn from the data, the writer is able to illustrate the extent of variation in the use of second-person singular pronouns within the period when thou was gradually becoming obsolete. Her findings both corroborate those gained from earlier studies on the macro-level factors determining thou and you usage and shed new light on the contextual variation of the two pronouns. The study also proves how important and advantageous it is to be able to make use of well-compiled language corpora for studies in historical linguistics, in general, and in sociopragmatics, in particular.