English, Englishes and the History of the English Language
The above title is intended to reflect three different aspects of the current project, The New Cambridge History of the English Language. The plural form in the title, Englishes, refers to the many forms, across the world and in history, of the single language English based on the essential structural unity and mutual comprehensibility of most varieties of English, with the exception of pidgins and creoles which owe their origin to very different social circumstances from other forms of English. The history of the English language in the title directs attention to the research agenda focused on tracing the origins, development and diversification of English since its earliest beginnings about a millennium and a half ago and also to the models and methodologies devised by scholars to insightfully examine historical data of the language.
The current project consists of six volumes in two groups of three (see overview at the end of this chapter). The first three volumes are organised in an approximate chronological order, but the strict division into periods, which has hitherto characterised most historical treatments of English (cf. Hogg Reference Hogg1992–2001), has been avoided.Footnote 1 The main focus is on how the language changed over the centuries, as evidenced in the textual record,Footnote 2 with the nature of change and reasons for this change forming the central focus in all chapters. The second three volumes are dedicated to varieties of English outside the historical stream in the south-east of England which basically led to modern standard British English. The volumes are dedicated to geographical areas, the first to Britain, Ireland and Europe, the second to North America with the Caribbean and the third, in two parts, to Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific.
The Evolution of English in History
The progress of English throughout one and a half millennia has not been a straight line leading to the codified standard found today in written English in England and in the pronunciation norm labelled Received Pronunciation. Various authors have sought to find suitable metaphors to describe this development as presumed by many scholars in the field, notably older writers such as Wyld (Reference Wyld1936). Watts, in his criticism of standard English narratives,Footnote 3 employed the metaphor of a funnel whose opening at the top represented the many forms of earlier English with the neck of the funnel standing for the reduction in variation and streamlining of varieties of English which led to the codification and establishment of a standard (Watts Reference Watts2011: 291).
For the current project, the history and present-day forms of English are seen more as a braided river (Figure G.1). This consists of several intersecting streams which criss-cross over a landscape, sometimes growing in width and depth, sometimes diminishing, if not disappearing. Sometimes streams merge with others; sometimes they divide and go separate ways. Importantly, there is no main stream to which all others are subsidiaries. What all streams in a braided river have in common is that they move forward. In the case of languages and varieties of languages, this happens as they move forward through time in the communities that speak them.
A braided river.
Developments in the Research Field
When historical linguistics, and more specifically the history of the English language, evolved as a discipline, a standard periodisation was used with a tripartite division into Old, Middle and Early Modern English. However, as Beal (Reference Beal2004: 2) notes, the temporal distance that now exists between our present and the beginning of the early modern period has necessitated a further division. This gave rise to the Late Modern English period which basically covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This time span has become an active area of scholarly inquiry and has seen the publication of collections and monographs in recent years (see e.g. Kytö, Rydén and Smitterberg Reference Kytö, Rydén and Smitterberg2006; Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade2009; Hickey Reference Hickey2010; Kytö and Smitterberg Reference Kytö and Smitterberg2020).
Moving away from issues of periodisation, one can see that other expansions have concentrated on approaches to data and novel methodologies rather than chronological segments of the history of English. From the present multi-volume history, one could mention the following chapters, written by scholars noted for their work on the topics treated there, for example historical sociolinguistics (Nevalainen and Säily, Vol. I), corpus linguistics (Bohmann and Sommerer, Vol. II; Kytö and Smitterberg, Vol. II), historical pragmatics (Jucker, Vol. I), grammaticalisation (A. Smith, Vol. II) as well as vernacular speech and orality (Moore, Vol. II; Włodarczyk, Vol. II). As the data from these approaches is distributed over longer periods of time, any strict tripartite chronological division is not appropriate. Indeed, the division by time period can be seen as a convenient tool for historical linguistics rather than as a given from the sociocultural history of English.Footnote 4
Genre Types in the History of English
Close examination of the various genres represented in the textual record (Part III of Volume II) has characterised much recent research, hence the concentration on the diverse genres attested in the history of English. The study of genres has been greatly facilitated by the creation of dedicated computer corpora at various universities, where their study forms a focus of linguistic research.Footnote 5 The greatly increased availability of computer corpora, and of appropriate software for processing and querying them, has also led to quantitative analysis becoming a default requirement for contemporary linguistic studies (Bohmann and Sommerer, Vol. II).
Works on the nature of English are found in grammatical treatises from an early stage of the language (already in the Old English period, Seiler and Studer-Joho, Vol. II). Scrutinising different genres can yield various insights into language use for a given period, as Kohnen and Kohnen (Vol. II) have shown in their examination of religious texts.
Given the verbatim records of court depositions, the language of courtroom documents has been subject to close investigation in recent years (Walker, Vol. II), for example as a result of the digitisation of the court records from the Old Bailey in London. A genre which can look back at a considerable tradition is that of journalism, specifically newspapers. Their language is the object of scrutiny in the chapter by Bös and Brownlees (Vol. II).
The term ‘ego document’ refers to any text of a personal nature with an identifiable individual as originator and central focus. This is true, for instance, of personal letters, diaries and travelogues (Auer and Hickey, Vol. II; Kaislaniemi and Sairio, Vol. II).
Not all historical textual records are as complete as linguists might wish. Some are quite fragmentary and one must make do with what is available. Such cases are known collectively as ‘bad data’ (in the lexicalised sense of ‘partial’, Hickey, Vol. II) and are worth investigating despite the caveats necessitated by their incomplete nature.
The writing of history is an activity which can be traced back to the Old English period and is one which has morphed and matured over the centuries with differences in style and presentation changing along with shifts in the general perception of history (Claridge, Vol. II). This is also true of medical and scientific writing (Hiltunen and Taavitsainen, Vol. II), which can be taken as a proxy for general academic writing that has developed and altered over many centuries.
For much of the history of English, authors have been almost exclusively male.Footnote 6 Female voices begin to appear very tentatively in the seventeenth century (Percy, Vol. II) with a considerable expansion in the eighteenth century in the realm of grammar writing (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Vol. III) because such practice was regarded as appropriate for women by the male-oriented society of the era.
Methods and Models
Data from the history of English has now been used for over half a century to test grammatical models. The first of these was generativism (Allen, Vol. II), which expanded greatly in the 1960s and 1970s and is as valid today as it was in its early stages despite the many versions which have been put forward. Functional accounts of language change (Cuyckens, Vol. II) contrast with more formal approaches, while grammaticalisation (A. Smith, Vol. II) offers a framework to capture commonalities in pathways of language change. There are also cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to change in the history of English (Bergs, Vol. II; Hundt, Pfenninger and Mollin, Vol. II), and Construction Grammar has been applied to this area as well (Hilpert, Vol. II).
Ideology and the History of English
With the increasing standardisation of English in the eighteenth century, one can also observe an incipient ideology (Milroy, Vol. III), which attributed social prestige and power to standards and stigmatised the remaining non-standard varieties, often highlighting features which became objects of censure (Beal and Cooper, Vol. III). A discourse of prescriptivism (Chapman, Vol. III) appeared which has remained surprisingly tenacious despite all the social changes and democratisation tendencies which have been registered in the past two to three centuries.
The use of language by particular social groups is a topic which is receiving increased attention from scholars. The various networks and coalitions which are discernible throughout the history of English have been examined for their role in language change (Dossena, Vol. III). In a similar vein, communities of practice, collections of individuals who participate in a certain shared activity, have been scrutinised (Kopaczyk and Jucker, Vol. III).
Revising Standard Wisdoms
Among the many standard wisdoms which have been revised in the past few decades is that concerning the role of language contact (Hickey Reference Hickey2020) in the history of English. Recent research has re-evaluated the nature and effect of the contact with the existing Celtic population when the first Germanic settlers arrived in England in the fifth century (Filppula and Klemola Reference Filppula and Klemola2009). Furthermore, the interaction of English speakers with other languages, such as Anglo-Norman and Latin in the late Middle Ages, has also been reassessed (Wright Reference Wright2020).
Directions for the Twenty-First Century
The New Cambridge History of the English Language was intentionally designed to be different from the original Cambridge History of the English Language (Hogg Reference Hogg1992–2001), which on good grounds can be expected to retain its usefulness for years to come. The new history was constructed to explicitly take cognisance of the new sources of data, thanks to advancements in corpus linguistics, and to do justice to the many theoretical positions in historical linguistics which have arisen in the past few decades (see Vols. II and III in particular) apart from giving full recognition to the many varieties of English worldwide and the manner in which the language disseminated across the globe (see Vols. V and VI, Parts 1 and 2).
Innovative methodologies have been developed to track language variation and change as outlined in Sharma (Vol. IV). This includes examining lifespan changes in individuals’ language (Buchstaller and Wagner, Vol. IV), the manner in which speakers perceive the dialects around them (Montgomery, Vol. IV) and a reassessment of historical dialects and their relationship to standards and supraregional varieties (Maguire, Vol. IV; Hickey, Vol. IV).
A View of History
The general approach adopted for these volumes involves a broadening of scope, seeing history as beginning in the deep past and continuing up to and including the present, that is, viewing history as a continuous dynamic process. It is also seen as having a considerable geographical spread, a consequence of British colonial expansion from approximately the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries (Hickey Reference Hickey2004; Tagliamonte Reference Tagliamonte2013). Many overseas varieties arose out of English, Scottish and Irish inputs, either directly through settlers or, for English input, indirectly through exposure in the education system, and came in time to differ from those varieties transported during the early colonial period, that is, taking paths independent of their historical precursors. This is evident in North America in what later became the United States and Canada (Wolfram, Vol. V; Schilling, Vol. V). However, the spread of English beyond Britain and Ireland began before the first anglophone settlements of North America with early British settlement in the south-east Caribbean (Smith, Vol. V; Williams, Vol. V). Thus, a key goal of the present history has been to examine the diverse geographical trajectories which the English language embarked on and to carefully document the varieties which resulted from this process. This approach is supported by the burgeoning field of varieties studies which has widened the focus of scholarly research on English, including its historical dimension, to well beyond standard British and American English today (see Vol. VI, Parts 1 and 2 in particular). This research focus is often subsumed under the label World Englishes, a sphere of active academic interest among linguists of many persuasions (Filppula, Klemola and Sharma Reference Markku, Klemola and Sharma2017; Schreier, Hundt and Schneider Reference Daniel, Hundt and Schneider2020; Bolton Reference Bolton2024).
Beyond English: Language Change Elsewhere
Several thousand languages are spoken around the world. While English is the most widely used as a lingua franca and second language, it has no privileged position from a linguistic perspective. It is important to remember that the structures and processes attested in English throughout its history represent only a fraction of those found across the world’s languages. For students of linguistics, it is essential to bear this caveat in mind when studying English. One way to broaden one’s view of language change – away from any perceived or actual Anglocentric perspective – is to consult books on historical linguistics which are not written primarily from an anglicist standpoint, such as Campbell (Reference Campbell2020), or by anglicists who embrace a wider approach, such as Burridge and Bergs (Reference Burridge and Bergs.2017).
Concluding Remarks
The New Cambridge History of the English Language is about diversity on many levels and gives due recognition to the multilingual origins of standard English (Wright Reference Wright2020) as well as the spread of the language well beyond its earlier borders in the past few centuries (Crystal Reference Crystal2004). It is hoped that the present history can be of help in covering a wide range of topics in chapters which can be easily handled by student groups in one or two sittings from a course. These chapters are dedicated to discussing approaches to the subject, to theories and methodologies and to how historical data is collected, processed and analysed. In sum, the volumes of the new history are aimed at assisting students and scholars engaging with the history of English and discovering what linguistic insights its study can yield. Furthermore, the volumes give voice to the diverse forms of English across the globe and thus represent a fitting testimony to the living history of the English language.
Overview of The New Cambridge History of the English Language
Volume I: Context, Contact and Development
The historical framework for English, in Germanic and further back in Indo-European, opens this volume on the beginnings of the English language. It considers the various facets of language development in medieval England. External influences on the language are centre stage, with Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian and French contact examined in individual chapters. The code-switching and language mixing that this contact gave rise to are discussed, as are the roots of standardisation in the complex linguistic ecology of the late Middle Ages. The volume also contains seven chapters dedicated to individual levels of language, which provide overviews of the respective areas for the entire course of the history of English.
Volume II: Documentation, Sources of Data and Modelling
The textual record for the history of English forms the opening of this volume, which examines early inscriptions, glosses and manuscripts, highlighting the documentation of vernacular speech and orality. The chapters of the first part also consider the history of orthography, books and printing and the rise of a philological tradition. The recent appearance of historical corpora as well as thesauri which document borrowings, phrases, slang and dialect writing also forms a focus, adding a firm quantitative element to analyses. The second part concludes these textual concerns with examinations of the language of Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare. The third part is dedicated to a scrutiny of the major text types found in the history of English, for example religious, medical, scientific and journalistic writing as well as ego documents and works by female writers. The volume concludes with a consideration of models and theories which have been put forward to analyse historical documents, such as generative and functional accounts, cognitive and psychological approaches, grammaticalisation and Construction Grammar.
Volume III: Transmission, Change and Ideology
How language change manifests itself in the history of English is the primary focus of this volume. It considers the transmission of English through dictionaries and grammars down to the digital means found today. The volume investigates various issues in language change, for instance what role internal and external factors played throughout history. There are several chapters dedicated to change in different areas and on different levels of language, including investigations of the verbal system, of adverbs, of negation and case variation in English as well as more recent instances of syntactic change. The volume also looks at issues such as style and spelling practices which fed into emergent standard writing, and the complex issue of linguistic prescriptivism, with chapters on linguistic ideology, phonological standards and the codification of English in dictionaries. It concludes with a consideration of networks and communities of practice and the historical enregisterment of linguistic features.
Volume IV: Britain, Ireland and Europe
This volume focuses on the vernacular forms of English found at various locations both in Britain and Ireland as well as a few in continental Europe. The goal of these chapters is to provide histories of those dialects not necessarily leading to standard English, largely within the framework of language variation and change which is the immediate concern of the opening chapters. There follow treatments of dialects in English including that of early London and the various regions of England. The English language in Scotland is given special treatment with chapters on Scots and Standard Scottish English. Wales and Ireland form the focus of subsequent chapters which in particular examine language contact and its effect on English in these regions. The volume closes with presentations of the development of English in the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus.
Volume V: North America and the Caribbean
The development of forms of English in North America from the earliest founder populations down to present-day varieties in the United States and Canada is the focus of the current volume. The linguistic analyses of today’s forms emphasise language variation with a view to determining the trajectories for current linguistic change. The part on English in the United States also has dedicated chapters on the history of African American English and the English of Spanish-heritage people in the United States. Part II is concerned with English in Canada and contains seven chapters beginning with the anglophone settlement of Canada and continues by considering individual regions of that country including English in Quebec. Part III consists of chapters devoted to the history of English in the Anglophone Caribbean, looking at various creoles in that region, both in the islands and the rim, with a special chapter on Jamaica and on the connections between the Caribbean and the United States.
Volume VI, Parts 1 and 2: English in Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific
In-depth coverage of varieties of English across the world, outside the European and North American arenas, is offered in the current volume, which is divided into two parts. The first part is dedicated to English in Africa and the South Atlantic and the second part to English in the Indo-Pacific region. In Part 1, there are introductory chapters dealing with the colonial transportation of English overseas and the generic types of English which resulted, as well as chapters on second-language and foreign-language varieties, often subsumed under the label World Englishes. English-lexifier pidgins and creoles are also examined. The remaining sections and Part 2 in its entirety treat forms of English in large geographical regions of the world. Africa is considered, with a division into three blocks: west, east and south, along with the South Atlantic, each with different linguistic ecologies determined by history, geography and demography. In Part 2 of the current volume, varieties of English in South Asia, South-East Asia, Australasia and the Pacific are treated. These regions show comparable scenarios: non-native varieties of English in contact with many background languages. In recent decades the significance of East Asia for varieties of English has increased given the economic development of China along with the ever-increasing role which English in other Asian nations such as South Korea and Japan has come to play, especially with the growing numbers of speakers acquiring English as a first language in countries like India or the Philippines.
