Volume 1, Issue 2 -

This paper considers how micro-level analysis can enrich our understanding of macro-level processes of language change, using a case study of the Tudors. It explores how language use in the Tudor family network relates to the role of the Court in the supralocalisation of innovative forms during the sixteenth century. Using an original corpus of correspondence and other autograph writings, I conduct a comparative analysis of the language of Elizabeth Tudor with her siblings, parents and caregivers. The findings suggest that Elizabeth’s siblings, Mary I and Edward VI, were progressive in changes localised at the Court, but that Elizabeth’s caregivers and peripheral kin may have influenced Elizabeth’s uptake of non-Court-based changes. Using Network Strength Scores to represent the social experiences of Elizabeth and her nearest kin, it appears that Elizabeth’s changing position within the Court network, from a peripheral to more central member, may have played a part in the Court’s catalyst effect for the supralocalisation of innovative forms, and the emergence of an overtly prestigious “norm” in Early Modern English.

It has been observed that language-shift varieties of English tend to be relatively close to Standard English (Trudgill and Chambers 1991: 2–3). An often-used explanation for this is that Standard English was acquired in schools by the shifting population (Filppula 2006: 516). In this paper, I discuss three cases of language shift in the Early Modern period: in Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Shetland. I offer evidence that the role of Standard English education was, in fact, fairly limited, and suggest that the standard-likeness of Cornish English, Manx English and Shetland Scots is most likely due to the particular sociolinguistic circumstances of language shift, where not only language contact, but also dialect contact contributed to a loss of non-standard-like features and the acquisition of a standard-like target variety. This atelic and non-hierarchical process is termed apparent standardisation .

This paper discusses the methods that historical sociolinguists can use in order to avoid anachronism. It is argued that there are four practical ways of triggering a sense of scale , both for external variables that correlate with past language use and for the linguistic data that we inherited from past societies: by learning from social and cultural historians, by visiting judicial archives, by making scholarly digital editions, and by using corpus linguistic statistical procedures. The case study focused on here is Portuguese in the Early Modern period, from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century. The size of an ideal sample of informants is discussed, based on the demographic history of Portugal. Furthermore, social categories are established relevant in the context of Portuguese cultural history, taking into account the social world that made sense to Early Modern people. Next, I introduce a corpus of Early Modern letters containing a close-to-conversational register, and discuss two case studies. An analysis of spelling variation in the corpus shows the diachronic dialectal spread of a merger of sibilants. The statistical analysis of keywords shows the pervasiveness of register markers as well as some typical uses found in epistolary communication by social actors from different social strata.

This paper takes a look at recent shifts in sociolinguistic paradigms and considers their applications to historical sociolinguistic research. Besides growth areas such as multilingualism, a current trend is convergence of established approaches. My discussion focuses on those that go even further, bridging the gap between macro- and micro-levels of analysis in the historical context of study. Presented as interdependent levels, layers or domains of analysis, these models usually imply that the analyst needs to cross boundaries between established sociolinguistic paradigms when moving from one level of analysis to another. From the analyst’s perspective the issues include the layered simultaneity of the multiple contexts present at any given point in time and the ways in which their chronologies stretch over time and space. I discuss the reconstruction of macro- and micro-contexts and their interdependence by presenting a case study of Samuel Pepys, a seventeenth-century English naval administrator. I conclude by advocating both informational maximalism and an empirical baseline for such studies. Digital humanities will no doubt facilitate this research in the future.