The Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark) are situated off the coast of Normandy (France), west of the Cotentin peninsula. A brief look at a map shows that, from a geographical point of view, they are much closer to France than to England. As the original language in these islands is a form of Norman French, they have traditionally been regarded in dialectology as a French-speaking area. However, the exclusive interest of traditional dialectology in Channel Islands French is not an adequate reflection of the current linguistic situation. Today, English is clearly the dominant language in the Channel Islands. The number of speakers of Norman French is rather small and steadily decreasing. Over the past 200 years, English has gained more and more influence and has gradually replaced the local Norman French dialects. Indeed, there are clear indications that they will become extinct in the not-too-distant future.

This chapter investigates the continuum which exists between vernacular speech and standard language and examines various issues which arise in this area. Key to the continuum of speech in any Western-style society is the notion of a supraregional variety which, on the one hand, embodies sufficient vernacular features to fulfil the identity function of language but, on the other hand, does not contain features which are stigmatised in a speech community. Supraregional varieties are dynamic entities and are thus subject to language variation and change. Such varieties are only occasionally explicitly codified. However, speakers in any speech community will be aware of stigmatised and non-stigmatised features (with regard to accepted usage in more formal situations) and can move along the continuum of relative vernacularity in given contexts.

The English language has been attested in Ireland since the late twelfth century but did not become widespread until the beginning of the seventeenth century when vigorous planting of English settlers took place. Distinct forms of Irish English began to develop which were a mixture of diverse dialectal inputs from England and transfer phenomena from Irish as the native population began to switch to the language of the colonisers. Almost as the same time as planting of English settlers started there was a movement out of Ireland, either by deportation or voluntary emigration, largely due to economic circumstances. This led to areas in overseas anglophone regions showing centres of Irish emigration, e.g. Appalachia with eighteenth-century Ulster Scots or the north-eastern coast of the USA with nineteenth-century southern Irish Catholics. At these locations the linguistic impact of Irish English was slight but traces can be found still which testify to this input.

The study of dialects in Britain and Ireland yields insight into the manner in which social forces affect the development of language. The history of English, outside of the trajectory which led to Southern Standard British English, shows a rich and varied tapestry of features, processes and interactions, which make this subject particularly rewarding in the context of an inclusive view of the language’s history. The identity function of local norms is apparent in all the studies of dialects in individual locations and ultimately accounts for the survival of local varieties despite the increasing pressure from supraregional forms of English represented in the educational system and very widely across the media landscape of modern Britain and Ireland. Looking beyond Britain and Ireland, factors that have influenced the English spoken in four small but significant locations in Europe (the Channel Islands, Malta, Cyprus and Gibraltar) are examined, revealing a rich interaction of colonial legacy, contact and national identity.

Much has been written about Maltese and its transformation into a language in its own right, both through external contact with other languages and due to internal factors. Less has been said about the English of Malta. In spite of regular criticism from purists, Maltese English has started to be regarded as a variety, distinct from others. This chapter examines the complex plurilinguistic context within which the variety has emerged and continues to flourish. It demonstrates how the socio-political context provided perfect conditions for the establishment of English as the de facto second language of Malta. Extensive use of English in different domains has also contributed to shaping the local variety in distinct ways to reflect the needs of the community (or subsets thereof) it serves. The chapter also outlines some of the more salient characteristics of the variety, in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, meaning and discourse.

This chapter explores some of the distinctive characteristics of English in Tyneside in relation to the socio-historical and sociolinguistic contexts in which they have emerged, evolved and in some cases declined. The main focus is on features of phonetics and phonology, but some consideration is also given to lexis, as a useful introduction to many of the historical influences that have played a part in moulding the dialect, and to aspects of grammar and discourse, which will be seen to reflect some of the same factors that have shaped the accent. In all of these areas, there is some loss of older, traditional forms, but the story is not just one of the increasing prevalence of supraregional variants; there are also more recent developments and current changes which are themselves distinctive and therefore help to maintain the individual character of Tyneside English.

The New Cambridge History of the English Language is aimed at providing a contemporary and comprehensive overiew of English, tracing its roots in Germanic and investigating the contact scenarios in which the language has been an active participant. It discusses the various models and methodologies that have been developed to analyse diachronic data concisely and consistently. The new history furthermore examines the trajectories the language has embarked on during its spread worldwide and presents overviews of the varieties of English found throughout the world today.

This chapter deals with Scotland’s Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland, which are home to two of the most conservative and distinctive local dialects in Scotland and Britain. An overview is provided of the local histories that led to the emergence of the present-day dialects and speech communities. Linguistic features are summarised and the linguistic situation discussed with regard to Scots and Scottish Standard English (SSE). To illustrate the local Scots–SSE speech range, a model of vowel variation along with text passages for the two poles is provided for Shetland. A corpus-based study of the lesser-known feature of pulmonic ingressive speech in Orkney and Shetland is presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ongoing societal and demographic changes and their potential effects on the linguistic situation and local dialects.

This chapter offers a new outlook on the history of Scots, a minority language related to English, up to 1700. Scots and its history have been a subject of pioneering work in historical linguistics, especially in historical dialectology and digital approaches to language change. The chapter takes stock of previous scholarship and the extra-linguistic events which shaped the linguistic situation in Scotland from the medieval period till the early eighteenth century. It then highlights problematic areas and questions related to constructing a narrative for a history of an unstandardised minority language, with special focus on defining Scots as a language of written communication, its family tree, periodisation and status, as well as metalinguistic perspectives. The discussion finishes with an overview of the most recent research on various aspects of structure and language use, and a summary of available resources for the study of historical Scots.

The relative malleability of adults’ first language grammar, and thus the contribution of the post-adolescent individual to historical language change, is a contested issue in linguistic research. The argument revolves around the extent to which it is possible for post-adolescent individuals to modify the grammatical system of their native language(s). This chapter summarises the contribution of several areas of linguistics to this debate, highlighting in particular some historical sociolinguistic studies of English. We then review the evidence from over forty-six longitudinal linguistic panel studies, confirming that some adults can adjust their native repertoires across the life-course, even into old age. Yet many questions remain to be answered with regard to the nature of post-adolescent linguistic lability. We discuss several questions of particular importance for the study of generational language change.

In its history, the phonology of Irish English went through a number of stages in which features arose and subsequently declined. Many of the traits to be seen in the textual record for early modern Irish English were lost by the nineteenth century, with others being retained, such as the incomplete long vowel shift and dentalisation of stops before R. The early twentieth century saw a change in supraregional Irish English given the endonormative reorientation which set in after independence in 1922. Language contact between Irish and English has been a consistent theme in Ireland’s history and has led to a prolonged language shift, which culminated in the accelerated switch in the mid nineteenth century with the vast majority of the population being native speakers of English by the onset of the twentieth century. The language shift also resulted in many instances of grammatical transfer from Irish to English, a small number of which remained emblematic of Irish English and have survived to this day.

This chapter presents a sociolinguistically focused overview of the history of Received Pronunciation (RP). The sociolinguistic community for whom it is a vernacular is a small one numerically but its form of speech had an outsized historical and sociolinguistic impact for over a century. Fundamental sociological and historical changes have since upended the sociolinguistic status of the elite sociolect in Great Britain and across the world. In attempting to place RP within the overall history of the English language, its development as a vernacular has often been overshadowed by, and confused with, its status as a standard accent in certain contexts and settings. The present discussion will distinguish between vernacular and standard, and focus on the variation and change of a vernacular elite sociolect over time, with an emphasis on the evolutions that took place in the period after the Second World War in Great Britain.

This chapter discusses the perceptions of English variation from the earliest available commentary to the present day. Historical commentary on English variation from various sources is discussed and contrasted with contemporary accounts of the perception of variation in English. The chapter discusses commonalities in the perception of regional variation over time, examining three overarching themes: the presence of a linguistic hierarchy; the focus on the ‘best’ forms of English in areas (and occupations) proximal to the centres of power, and general concerns about language change.

The city dialect of Liverpool has a unique profile in the context of other urban varieties in Britain. It is well known for such features as stop lenition and the NURSE–SQUARE merger, along with TH-stopping, these traits in combination forming a set which is not replicated elsewhere. The present study examines the historical background to Liverpool English, its geographical position in relation to the counties of Cheshire to the south and Lancashire to the north. In addition, the role of immigration to the city, especially that of Irish people in the nineteenth century, is discussed and the role which this input may have played in determining the developmental course for Liverpool English is evaluated. Finally, the current position of local speech in the city is examined and possible future pathways are indicated.