Introduction

A language as spoken over a period of 200 years (that is to say, of seven generations) during which a standard was emerging can be described as homogeneous only if we exclude linguistic change and geographical and social variation, that is, if the language is described on a highly abstract level. To speak of the Early Modern English language is therefore unjustified. EModE could indeed be taken as a typical example to illustrate the fact that language systems are neither homogeneous nor stable: the existence of a great number of individual lects was a precondition for linguistic change in EModE, a change which is largely the result of the selection and later codification of one of the existing variants.

If we wish to explain within a Labovian framework the functioning of the co-existing varieties in an EModE social setting, we find that in most cases the relevant information is lacking. This means that we must again limit ourselves to describing subsystems extracted from the analysis of texts. Comparative description in the form of diasystems is possible and would be interesting on the basis of texts such as T36 vs T36A, but in other cases would not repay the effort.

In the sixteenth century, the emerging standard and the increasing importance of linguistic and literary theory took the first step in the history of the English language towards creating some kind of recognizable and mandatory order out of the chaos of co-existing regional, social, diachronic and stylistic variants.