Despite their emphasis on internal history, language historians have typically implicitly invoked, even if only in a gross way, external history in the customary periodisation of the language - notwithstanding the fact that most developments which left significant marks on the language such as the Great Vowel Shift spanned centuries and are therefore difficult to pinpoint within our conventional boundaries. Editors of previous volumes in this series have rightly noted the linguistic arbitrariness in our convention of demarcating the major periods in the development of English by reference to major historical events such as the Norman Conquest, usually taken as the beginning of the Middle English period. After 1066, French became the language of court and law for the next 300 years, relegating English to domestic domains. The Anglo-Saxon nobility was practically wiped out. The English which re-emerged later was much altered in structure, and the debate still continues about the extent to which change was internally or externally motivated (see the papers in Gerritsen & Stein 1992, Bailey & Maroldt 1977, and Romaine 1996).

Historians generally refer to the language used between 1500 and 1700 as early Modern English (eModE), with some suggesting that it begins as early as 1400 and continues until 1800. The structural stability of English over the late Modern English period challenges any simple-minded view of the relationship between social change and language change which might lead us to expect that language change is necessarily faster and more radical during periods of social upheaval. Kilpió (1995), for instance, found remarkable stability from Old to early Modern English in the proportion of the functions of the verb to be (i. e. as copula or non-copular main verb as opposed to auxiliary in passive and active constructions). The copula uses are consistently the most frequent, although this varies according to text type.

While a major tenet of modern sociolinguistics is that language change is embedded in a social context, Finegan's chapter shows how the social changes of our period were to have a primary impact on the way that people looked at their language. Broadly speaking, one of the most important sociolinguistic developments affecting the modern period is standardisation, a process spanning centuries and still on-going. The late Modern English period consolidates the foundation laid for Modern Standard English to be codified in the grammars and dictionaries of the eighteenth century. In 1775 Dr Johnson (1709-84) published the dictionary (1755) that was to be definitive for generations to come, based on the usage of 'good' authors from Shakespeare to Addison. He furthermore insisted that the best pronunciation was that which deviated least from spelling. He found English 'copious without order and energetick without rules'. To men like Johnson, it was self-evident that English had no grammar. Throughout the century anything provincial or dialectal was heavily criticised. Among the vocabulary excluded from Johnson's dictionary were slang, dialect (including Scotticisms and Americanisms, see 1.3) and unnecessary foreign words. Yet much more was at stake than language standards (see 1.4). As Johnson noted in his preface 'Languages were the pedigree of nations.' Both needed laws because 'tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration'.

Historian Gwyn Williams sums up well the spirit of the time when he writes (1989: xvii):

The late 18th century was a great age for dictionaries and grammars in England. Most European states at the time were striving to standardise a national language and to eliminate dialects and minority tongues, none more so than the new French Republic with its 'language of liberty' [...] In [. . .] Britain, the standardisation of a national language assumed distinctive form.

Towering over the torrent of grammars and dictionaries were a trinity of texts - Bishop Lowth's comprehensive grammar of 11762 James Harris's theory of universal grammar of 1751 and Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755. Powerful, abundant and detailed, these governed the cultivation of 'good English' in an increasingly literate and book-reading country. They made the 'national language' into a class language. Grounded in a theory of a universal grammar which reflected qualities of the mind and in a veneration of Latin and Greek, they rigorously defined a 'refined language', strong in abstraction; it alone could be the vehicle of intellectual endeavour, including the political. Spoken English and the 'vulgar' in general was dismissed as the reflection of inferior minds, incapable of expressing anything of consequence, certainly of nothing political - 'cant' as Johnson called it. In an England where social distinctions were multiplying and intensifying as social mobility accelerated and in which the all-embracing veneration of a Glorious Constitution, dating from 1688 and enshrining a peculiar English liberty, had been strongly reaffirmed in the aftermath of American Independence, this conception of language achieved a hegemony of unparalleled power [. . .] Dissidents were trapped within the very words they had to use. If they resorted to the 'vulgar', as they often did, they simply validated their own exclusion. William Cobbett's struggle with 'grammar' was an exemplary epic. This was a 'national language' which enforced submission and dependency upon most of those who used it. It was what drove Blake to denounce 'mind-forg'd manacles' and Paine to complain of being 'immured in the Bastille of a word'.

It was Thomas Paine himself [...] who stormed this particular Bastille [. . .] by any standards one cares to apply, the impact of Paine on the English of England was shattering.

The starting year of this volume is of course intentionally symbolic because it marks the declaration of independence of the United States of America from Britain. Politically, it was a watershed of similar proportions to the events of 1066 and all that happened thereafter in England to culture and language. At the time our volume takes up the history of English, George III had reigned for sixteen years. Many of the leading literary persons of the eighteenth century who had left their mark on the language had already died: Alexander Pope in 1744, Laurence Sterne in 1768 and Oliver Goldsmith in 1774. Samuel Johnson was an old man of sixty-seven. A new generation of authors who were to have subsequent linguistic and literary impact had just been born: Jane Austen was a child of one year, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was four and William Wordsworth, six. New literary genres such as the novel had just made their appearance (see Watt 1957). As Thomas Paine rightly observed (1791/1969: 168), 'it was an age of revolutions'. In her chapter on the development of the literary language, Adamson documents two revolutions in poetic diction which had as their aim a return to 'common speech'.

Of course, the English language did not change overnight in response to momentous political events such as the Norman Conquest of 1066 any more than it did when the American colonies declared their independence. Its status, however, did. For it was not long after political separation that Noah Webster (1758-1843) declared linguistic independence (1789: 20):

As an independent nation our honour requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard. For the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language is on the decline. But if it were not so, she is at too great a distance to be our model and to instruct us in the principles of our language.

While nothing in this text is indexical of a variety which was already on its way to becoming distinct from British English, it was Webster who did much to alter spelling and propel the American variety on a different course (see Mencken 1919: chapter 8, for discussion of spelling differences between American and British English). In adopting some of the spellings that were later to become distinctly American, e. g. <or> instead of <our> in words such as color, <er> instead of <re> in words such as center, etc., Webster believed he was saving the language from the corruption by foreign influences (i. e. Latin, French, etc.) of ancient Saxon spelling. But more importandy, a 'capital advantage' of his reforms would 'make a difference between the English orthography and the American'.

Pages: 1 2

• Shifting centres of gravity and the notion of a common core

In their popular account of the history of the English language, McCrum, Cran & MacNeil (1986) mark symbolically their shift of focus by announcing their adoption of American spelling in chapter 7, which deals with American English. They (1986: 235n) predict that their decision will be greeted with 'pain or

• During the last sixty years, GenAm

Has taken on the role of the phonetic representative of American English - solely on the grounds of iis relative homogeneity and number of speakers. Thus, Prator describes it as 'the language which can be heard, with only slight variations, from Ohio through the Middle West and on to the

• Standard English was clearly conceived of as a male norm by both H. C. Wyld and Daniel Jones

In commenting on the characteristics of what he called 'Received Standard', Wyld (1934: 614) noted that it was heard most consistently at its best among officers of the British Regular Army. 'The utterance of these men is at once clear-cut and precise, yet free from affectation; at once downright and

• The English language proper belongs to the people who dwell south of Hadrian’s Wall

In 1913 the Society for Pure English was founded by the Poet Laureate of Great Britain, Robert Bridges, who (not surprisingly, given his puristic bent) was prejudiced against perceived Americanisms. As far as he was concerned, American English was a 'welter of blundering corruptions' (cited in Bailey 1991: 206). Writing

• The phonological common core

As far as the notion of a common phonological core is concerned, matters are also complicated because it has been seen in terms of the idea of a standard, but Standard English grammar is compatible with a wide range of accent types. Even Noah Webster saw the standardisation of pronunciation