Standard Languages and Language Standards

Gramley, WS 2008-09The Development of StE

Modernity and the Rise of a National Language

Modernity (1500-1900) was “both a state of mind and an economic and social condition.” In had its winners and losers; it broke with dogma and magic, but also led to the growth of rural poverty. (Leith / Graddol: 136)

Nationalism

“English was transformed from a vernacular language into one with a standardized variety that could be identified with England as a nation state." (138)

The Renaissance

With modernity came the spread of classical learning, which generated a need for vernacular texts and publishing (cf. Caxton, 1422-91).

The Rise of Humanist Science

The Rise of Science. The idea is advanced that empiricism led to a greater willingness to look at English on its own merits and not in terms of Latin (156). Reading B: D. Graddol. “The Development of Scientific English” (171-179).

This included language study (grammar, dictionaries). The emergence of modern science and the changes in vocabulary this brought with it – and new forms of reasoning and argumentation (affecting the grammatical resources of English).

The Royal Society, founded in 1660, aimed at solving the dilemma of publishing in an international language (Latin; today English) and getting international attention or using the local language and reaching their own people (but no further) (Graddol: 172).

Latin was, potentially, a secret (or at least restricted) language. And initially English was not adequate to the task (173). English still lacked the technical vocabulary, but also the grammatical resources (such as discussing cause and effect) (174).

The Growth of Capitalism

This included the growth of cottage industry and then of “manufactories.” Rapid inflation and the slow growth of working class incomes led to the growing importance of social class in English society.

There were also new ideas about “social correctness” and “forms of English that indicated a speaker’s social position” (Leith / Graddol: 137).

Pre-Reformation movements

Among the many religious movements of the Middle Ages the Lollard movement is especially prominent.

The Lollards (or Lollardy) were a religious movement with political implications.

It had a reform character about it, stressing individual piety as opposed to churchly office.

The basis of belief lay in the Scriptures, hence the importance of an English translation of the Bible, which would make the word of God accessible to all (or all who were literate).

John Wycliffe (about 1320-1384)

Wycliffe was a prominent leader and a translator of a Middle English version of the Bible.

Resistance to him and his translation was enormous. Why?

An English Bible and a (somewhat) anti-clerical movement was dangerous to the authority of the Church.

This was esp. the case after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381

The Reformation

Nation and Protestantism became closely associated (vs. Catholic Europe and the Roman Church), and “‘Englishness’ … was Protestant, upright, industrious and defensive towards the outside world.”

Puritanism and the Rise of Science

In the 16th century the prerequisites for StE were in place: • a differentiated vocabulary, • a flourishing literary tradition, • grammars of the language, • proposals for rationalizing spelling, • handbooks of pronunciation. This continued in the 17th and got support from Protestantism and its intellectual independence. The Puritans saw value in English and the Anglo-Saxon tradition (as opposed to Latin) and studied it and the dialect of their own times. However, the pan-English nature of Puritanism reinforced English as the national language (Leith / Graddol: 153).

The Process of Standardization

• Selection• Expansion / Elaboration• Codification• Acceptance / Implementation

An example of selection: The Quakers

The Quakers are (very mistakenly) portrayed as Puritans (in Leith and Graddol: 155f).

Their insistence on retaining the use of thou is introduced as a sign of egalitarianism, which it was.

However, the standard language went a different way and standardized the use of singular you instead.

Without planning this may come about via focusing (Le Page / Tobouret-Keller 1985: 187), i.e. a strong sense of norms and the following four “agencies”:

“1 close daily interaction in the community;“2 the mechanisms of an education system;“3 a sense of common cause or group loyalty, perhaps

caused by perception of a common threat;“4 the presence of a powerful model, such as the usage

of a leader, a poet, a prestige group or a set of religious scriptures.”(Leith / Graddol: 139)

The Elaboration of English

It became a Renaissance goal to make English eloquent, which itself necessitated having words for every idea and synonyms to prevent stylistically unwished for repetition.

The idea of copiousness was central and was to be solved by adding new words or increasing polysemy.

Grammatically, rhetorical structures were cultivated, “such as ‘antithesis’ in which oppositions are carefully balanced against each other.”

Sources of new words:(1) word formation; (2) borrowing from Latin or Greek; (3) reviving obsolete English words (possibly with

new meanings).

30,000 new words entered the language between 1500 and 1700, esp. in the early 1600s, where approximately 300 per year were added (Leith / Graddol: 142).

Dictionaries were enlisted to make these “hard words” accessible. (143).

Codification

Prestige Styles as a Force for Linguistic Change

At the beginning of the 17th century grammarians were still relatively open to regional forms. By the end of the century they were seen as "incorrect."

Now grammarians "were prescribing the correct language for getting ahead in London society and standard English had risen to consciousness."(Shaklee: 60)

The grammarians were codifying "the tail end of a changing standard. Indeed, the standard they describe will eventually change, although some of the later grammarians thought that if they could write it down thoroughly enough and teach it rigorously enough, they could establish a language that would never change. … The rules really don't work, though, in this last quarter of the twentieth century, and the gap between rule and actual usage points to a still-changing 'standard' English" (Shaklee: 61)

Examples:1. Gil (1619) calls "Have ye y-do?" western dialect2. Ben Jonson (1623) calls the {-en} plural verb ending

archaic3. Greaves (1594) calls present-tense indicative be

vulgar4. Gil calls does and has incorrect for doth and hath (60)

The Reformation and language acceptance

The Bible (1526) and the Book of Common Prayer(1549) appeared in English. As a possible reflex of this identity, many laws were translated from Latin into English under Henry VIII. This helped make them English rather than international (Leith / Graddol: 149).

The Authorized or King James Version of the Bible appeared in 1611 and became the standard English translation before the late 20th century. It became the standard of (written) English throughout England, but also in Scotland and, of course, wherever else the language was taken by emigrant settlers.

Acceptance / ImplementationAn Economic Model of Social and Linguistic PrestigeA good example given is the case of the Southern regionalism ain't, which was brought to northern and midland cities at the end of the 19th century as people went there to get the new factory jobs which were available. These immigrants were "automatically members of the lowest social class. They brought with them their ain't, which the middle classes cited (along with seen for saw, don't for doesn't, and they was for they were) as a linguistic marker that excluded the speaker from membership in their group. If a southern speaker wanted to rise socially and economically, he had to change, among otherthings, his dialect, substituting the prestige forms of the negated befor his ain't (and changing other verb inflections). A characteristic of a regional dialect became a characteristic of a social dialect." "…The dialect characteristics of the South have become features of the lower-class dialect of American English because the southern laborer has settled in all American cities, particularly those of the Northeast and Midwest, where much of the economic power of the United States resides. In contrast, the characteristics of middle- and upper-class dialect of those areas have become the hallmarks of 'standard' American English." (Shaklee: 37)

Regional and Social Variation in the Speech of Medieval England French was used at the top and English at the bottom of the social scale after 1066 and until 1204 (when King John lost his claim to Normandy).

With the withdrawal of French at the top there was room for Englishmen and "a general social upheaval that greatly increased the opportunity to move from class to class into social prosperity" (Shaklee: 38).

At the same time people from all over England were moving to London and bringing their widely divergent dialects with them.

Thoughts turned increasingly to the question of standards.

Demographic change

By the end of the 16th century the preferred dialect was that of London. By this time London was a center of commerce as well. (Shaklee)

Demographic: the major population center in the 14th century was south of the Humber River and in the East Midland (where the Black Death, 1349-1400, was less severe).

Increasingly more midlanders and northerners were prominent in the London city government.

Economic center The East Midland area was the economic center for the exportation of wool and grain in the 13th and 14th centuries In the 15th century Yorkshire led in woolens; northern and western counties in wool; the East Midlands in grain; London, Norfolk, Essex, Devon in shipping; after 1486 (Henry VII) woolens overtook wool in the export trade.Late 15th and 16th centuries: the enclosures proceeded apace.In 1560 grain overtook wool in profitability in England.All of these factors indicate changes in the economic and political centers of power and allow us to make conclusions about the language forms which were recognized as standard. Note esp. the importance of woolens and of grain from the north and east midlands respectively.

Social Dialects in London"If we posit the axiom that standard is the sociolect of the upper classes, then somehow certain characteristics of the northern dialect had to penetrate the prestige dialect."This was made possible by the extremely fluid social situation in the 14th century, which started out with a rigidly structures society, but one which was changed by the population losses of the Black Death (30-40% of the English population) and the Hundred Years' War, which cost the lives of much of the old nobility. Henry VII sought to fill offices increasingly often with people from the middle classes (businessmen)"Most of the northern forms seem to be working their way up from the bottom, probably moving up into the upper-class sociolect as speakers of the dialect move into the upper class."

A Shift in Social Favor

Caxton contributed greatly to standardization with his printing press (late 15th century): 1476ff.

Fisher suggests there were two standards in London: a spoken one and the written "Chancery standard."

The latter moved more quickly toward what would be Standard English while the former was slower to lose its ME features. (Shaklee: 48f).

Characteristics of the Chancery standard

Chancery has characteristics of modern standard taken from the northern dialects:

• 3rd person plural pronouns in th-

• adverbs in -ly rather than southern –lich

• southern -eth in the 3rd person singular

• midland past participles in –en

• London dialect retained her and hem and the occasional y- (Shaklee: 48f).

Homework

Reading: KummerWebsterPickerling