32.874, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Nevalainen, Palander-Collin, Säily (2018)

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Subject: 32.874, Review: English; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Nevalainen, Palander-Collin, Säily (2018)

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Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2021 21:38:20
From: Carol Percy [carol.percy at utoronto.ca]
Subject: Patterns of Change in 18th-century English

 
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EDITOR: Terttu  Nevalainen
EDITOR: Minna  Palander-Collin
EDITOR: Tanja  Säily
TITLE: Patterns of Change in 18th-century English
SUBTITLE: A sociolinguistic approach
SERIES TITLE: Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 8
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Carol E Percy, University of Toronto

SUMMARY

This coherent collection contains 16 chapters, each written by one or more
members of a well-coordinated team of ten. Five chapters provide Part I’s
“Introduction and background.” In “Approaching change in 18th-century English”
(3‒12), Terttu Nevalainen summarizes some previous studies of language and
usage: the century saw the entrenchment of normative attitudes. But the
project’s main aim is to examine “the sociolinguistic embedding of long-term
processes of change” (9). Its primary context is thus the studies of Early
Modern English in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC). An
Extension of the CEEC (CEECE) provides continuity between Early and
18th-century English. And the present collection adds four processes to four
of the fourteen tracked through Early Modern English by Nevalainen and
Raumolin-Brunberg (2003). But the author explains that their varying rates of
change might be further obscured by the rise of language awareness in the age
of prescriptivism.  

Nevalainen enumerates the ongoing transformations of “Society and culture in
the long 18th century” in Chapter 2 (13‒26). Through that century more
information becomes available about individual and general demographics in the
study. Income distributions from the beginning and end of the century show the
rising incomes of manufacturers and the decline of freehold landholders’. But
the transformations made by urbanization and industrialization also complicate
long-term sociolinguistic studies. The author’s sub-definitions of politeness
help to correlate shifting social and linguistic stratifications. Her
descriptions of literacy show similar gradations as literacy expands down the
social range. Nor is ‘correspondence’ a monolithic concept: two concluding
“infoboxes” introduce the social range of correspondents and (by Arja Nurmi
and Minna Nevala) letter-writing rhetoric.

In chapter 3, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza illuminates the cultural contexts connected
with “Grammar writing in the eighteenth century” (27‒43). She links “Grammar
production” to politeness and periodical culture. Authors’ marketing
strategies as well as adaptations of the Latin grammatical tradition help
modern sociolinguists understand the different “Target audience” and their
progress “Towards vernacular education.” Yáñez-Bouza features “Morphology and
syntax in eighteenth-century grammars” and links standardization to anxiety
about variation and change. “Case studies” connect regionally and socially
mobile corpus authors like William Clift to the consolidating concept of
correctness. Yáñez-Bouza also demonstrates the unpredictable impacts of
prescriptivism—triggering change and suppressing variation in the case of
strong verb past participles, but in the case of adjective comparison
sometimes reinforcing changes already in progress. Yáñez-Bouza’s
representative examples arise from her own corpora of precept and practice.
She explains how digitized diachronic corpora might show both the rates of
grammatical change as well as the potential effects of prescriptive
judgements, setting the stage for the rest of the collection (while
demonstrating its restrictions).

The studies at the core of this collection draw on Chapter 4’s subject, “The
Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE)” (45‒59). Samuli
Kaislaniemi explains the history of the original corpus, covering 1410 to
1681: private letters typically reflect language change from below and often
illuminate context and the author. The corpus extension to 1800 is both
hindered and enriched by copyright problems in modern times and by social
change since the Early Modern period. Its coherence is undermined by the
declining influence of professions like the clergy and regions like East
Anglia. The potential of the corpus is expanded with the extension of literacy
to women and lower ranks. How can a linguistic corpus be constructed to
represent such a changing yet hierarchized society? The section on “Coverage”
contrasts the paucity of letters from the newly literate classes with the
proliferating records of merchants and professional classes, who produce
one-third of the words in the collection. Kaislaniemi describes how the corpus
and associated databases classify writers, relationships with their
recipients, and the letters themselves. “An Infobox” by Mikko Hakala explains
the retrieval process for different kinds of linguistic variables.

Users of diachronic corpora will learn much from Chapter 5, “Research methods:
periodization and statistical techniques” (61‒74). How do these scholars match
their data with others’ studies when tracking real-time processes of change?
And how can frequencies be standardized across a diachronic corpus when the
data for social categories varies greatly across periods? When each social
category contains different amounts of data in a 20-year period, Nevalainen
summarizes strategies for “Periodizing processes of change.” Researchers can
lengthen the periods, average averages, or use the data itself to identify
stages: in Labov’s model, for instance, incipient changes are signalled when
the incoming variant is less than 15% (1994: 79‒83). When each corpus
informant produces different numbers of letters and words over time, they can
be given equal weight through “Basic methods of estimating frequencies.” The
different results of four methods are contrasted when tracking the incoming
variant HAS (vs HATH). Other processes of change have variables that are
unfeasible or impossible to identify in a corpus: the incoming progressive
aspect does not correspond to a finite range of other forms. Type and token
frequencies over time help to normalize forms “as a proportion of the number
of running words in the corpus” (68‒9) in some of the “Methods for studying
changes lacking a variable,” explained by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, and Anni
Sairio. The authors’ use of terms like “cucumiform” (70) and “beanplot” (72)
show their love of language and their statistical prowess. Their centralized
presentation of methods will be appreciated by readers of the studies at its
core.

The seven “Studies” in Part II represent processes at different stages of
change. All authors draw on the CEEC Extension (CEECE), while contextualizing
their findings in the CEEC and in earlier scholarship—often their own. All
summarize up-to-date histories of their variable, from a synchronic and a
diachronic point of view. And all consider the influence of prescriptive
criticism—which in most cases was minimal for these changes in progress. 

The first studies concern processes of change that were nearing completion.
“Thou” (and its other forms) had become very restricted in the eighteenth
century. A love letter from George, Prince of Wales to his mistress begins
(and thus qualifies the title of) Chapter 6, “’Ungenteel’ and ‘rude’? On the
use of “thou” in the eighteenth century” (77‒95) Indeed, author Minna Nevala
observes that grammarians could mark “thou” as “solemn” as well as “vulgar.”
In general in the CEECE, “thou” is used with decreasing frequency and more
with family than with friends. Within families, a writer’s use of “thou” often
marked a higher power relationship. Among friends, it seems to have been “a
familiarity booster” (86). Close attention to prolific users like Ignatius
Sancho contextualizes and crystallizes the multiple functions of “thou”—its
appearance in biblical and/or literary references can mark an individual’s
identity as pious and well-educated and their often teasing interactions with
intimate friends. Scholars of other variables will appreciate Nevala’s chart
of “instrumental” vs “intimate” and “status/power” vs “familiarity.”

This duelling use of archaisms is also considered in Chapter 7, “Going to
completion: the diffusion of verbal ‘-s’” (97‒116). Even by the seventeenth
century, verbal “-th” was a “hallmark of formal and religious usage,” found
most often in high-frequency verbs like “hath” and “doth” (97). Drawing on her
earlier studies of Early Modern English, Nevalainen explains that the
diffusion of “-s” from the north to the south was generally led by women, and
initially “from below in social terms” (107). Integrating new findings through
the eighteenth century, Nevalainen observes that gender difference “remained
relevant” but that social status “levelled out” as the change progressed
(106‒7). Individuals who continued to use it might have been rural but were
more likely to be merchants and especially clergymen—who of course might have
associated it with biblical texts. Normative grammars provide less light on
attitudes than individuals’ use—distanced registers by the educated, or more
intimate use by rural writers.

Chapter 8 concerns a third process that was nearing completion and
particularly difficult to study: affirmative DO was not only decreasing in
frequency but also identical in form to emphatic DO. Arja Nurmi carefully
considers “continuing variation in the use of auxiliary DO in affirmative
statements” (118) in “Periphrastic DO in eighteenth-century correspondence:
Emphasis on no social variation” (117‒35). Her summary of its history
identifies some contexts that continue to be relevant: verbs conveying strong
emotions, and first-person constructions—though she acknowledges that these
are characteristic of correspondence. The relative irrelevance of social
status is typical of late-stage changes—although the upper gentry seem to use
it more often, they are overrepresented early in the period when the form was
more common. Even outliers like Hester Piozzi underscore the challenges of
historical corpus research: her numerous uses of DO convey emotion and may
convey emphasis, and may signal her early adoption of modern patterns rather
than a conservative retention of old ones. 

Mikko Laitinen surveys a set of interrelated changes in Chapter 9, “Indefinite
pronouns with singular human reference: recessive and ongoing” (137‒58).
Previous studies tracked the rise of compounds in “-body” and “-one” (still in
variation, as “everybody” and “everyone”) and the fall of “-man” and such
independent forms as “every.” Independent forms were still most common at the
end of the seventeenth century, but soon declined. Diachronically, Laitinen
sees “the forms in “-body” replace the “-man” indefinites,” and then “the
independent forms […] lose ground after the forms in “-one” start increasing”
(158). Linguistically, Laitinen considers the grammaticalization of -body and
“-one” and the potential semantic ambiguity of outgoing “-man”.
Sociolinguistically, contemporary grammar books show little evidence of
attention or attitude. Laitinen’s comparison of CEECE data with earlier
studies finds “-body” used more often colloquially and led by women and
nobility around London. In contrast, “one” was used more in the north and by
the clergy, perhaps because of its presence in the 1611 Bible. Indeed,
Laitinen argues that “one” might have become a change from above: it is more
typically found in formal and written genres. Laitinen observes that letters
show these stylistic differences between body and one a century before more
formal printed texts. He also reports that linguistic conservatives are more
likely to be male: the outgoing “-man” was retained mostly by men. 

In Chapter 10, Minna Palander-Collin considers “Ongoing change: the diffusion
of the third-person neuter possessive “its” (159‒77). This variable is easier
to define but harder to find in that “its” and “of it” (and “thereof”) are
both relatively rare in the corpus. Her history of the study of the paradigm
identifies John Florio’s 1598 dictionary as the currently earliest instance of
“its.” In the Helsinki Corpus, incoming “its” had clearly colloquial
associations. In the HC and the CEEC, incoming “its” spread quickly (perhaps a
little earlier than the Civil War). In this chapter, Palander-Collin
reconstructs the spread of “its” by using the corpus divisions, the birthdates
of informants, and a lifetime spread of letters to establish whether
individuals adopted “its” with their community or with their age cohort, and
whether their usage changed during their lifetime—many generations did,
suggesting that both communal and generational change can happen together.
Regionally, the relatively little data seem to confirm that the change
originated in the south. Sociolinguistically, the change seems to have been
led initially by lower ranks, and seemingly initially by men—though this trend
is complicated by the fact that the corpus’s female informants use the neuter
possessive less often and write fewer letters generally. The grammatical
factors conditioning “of it” fail to explain the conservatism of William
Cowper—a recurring figure in this category. Normative grammars tend to
categorize it in contractions, among “it’s” and “‘tis.”

The final studies in Part II deal with features that are complicated to
quantify: neither the progressive nor derivational suffixes like “-ness” and
“-ity” can be defined as a variable. Anni Sairio identifies family
correspondence as the most salient factor in Chapter 11, “Incipient and
intimate: The progressive aspect” (179‒96). She tracks its use especially by
lower-ranking and also professional writers and its gradual increase through
the century. The form’s low frequency and the lack of material in women’s
letters result in no clear trends in gender until women clearly take the lead
by the end of the century. The progressive was particularly common in
correspondence among family members, and by lower-ranking and professional
writers: to introduce the chapter, Sairio uses the socially and regionally
mobile William Clift, who along with his sister is the form’s most frequent
user in the corpus. Sairio links the Clifts to the possible history of the
progressive—perhaps a calque from Cornish in West Country English.  William
Clift is also among professionals who frequently use complex forms: other
outliers include philosopher Jeremy Bentham and poet Thomas Gray. What
conclusions about more general usage might be drawn from a corpus of letters?
Sairio remarks that the progressive is less common in this corpus of
Correspondence than in other historical corpora such as ARCHER and the
Helsinki Corpus. 

Tanja Saïly asks a similar question when considering “Change or variation?
Productivity of the suffixes ‘-ness’ and ‘-ity’” (197‒218) in Chapter 12.
These derivational affixes create abstract nouns: “-ness” is a native suffix,
while “-ity” is of Romance origin and less accessible to the uneducated. In
previous studies of earlier periods, there was no gender difference with the
native affix, but women used the increasingly frequent “-ity” less
productively than men. In the current study, “-ity” becomes more productive,
but becomes stratified only by class as elite women received increasing
educational opportunities. The Clift siblings reappear here, where in
comparison to royal siblings their less productive use of “-ity” is linked to
their lower-class status. Saïly further speculates whether its rising
productivity for elite CEECE informants might reflects a stratifying style of
correspondence rather than general linguistic change; here she applies (and
qualifies) Biber’s dimensional definitions of eighteenth-century letter
register (2001). The productivity of “-ity” correlates with intimacy as well
as class, and with its increasing denotation of “embodied attribute or trait”
in contexts like “no vanity in me” (212) “-ity” could increasingly express
“involvement.” Yet “-ity” was also becoming more common in the Old Bailey
Corpus—a fact that could reflect either the formalization of courtroom style
or linguistic change more generally.

The four chapters in Part III contextualize these “Changes in retrospect”—and
in broader contexts. 

Connections between the CEECE and other corpora are the subject of Chapter 13,
“Zooming out: Overall frequencies and Google Books” (221‒33). Saïly calculates
the normalized frequencies of the processes studied to compare them with each
other and potentially with their frequencies in other corpora. She and Mikko
Laitinen outline strategies for using the Google nGram viewer while outlining
the limitations of even Mark Davies’ more transparent and searchable version
of it (2011‒ ). 

Saïly connects “Conservative and progressive individuals” (235‒42) with more
general sociolinguistic behaviour in Chapter 14. The individuals who are
multiple outliers are identified in two potentially useful Tables. Individuals
who are both progressive and conservative might signal the different social
meanings of forms: one informant might lead the proliferation of elevated
“-ity” while avoiding the colloquial progressive.  Most of the consistently
conservative informants are men, especially clergymen. Most of the
consistently progressive informants (in incipient and mid-range changes) were
socially stable professionals: a “network effect” (242) might be suggested by
the presence of some in the same London literary circles. 

The multiple authors of Chapter 15 infer more general sociolinguistic trends
from “Changes in different stages” (243‒54). Their intriguing Table of
linguistic features plots any salience of gender and/or social status against
stages of change—nearing completion, mid-range, incipient, for instance. Their
chapter elaborates the implications. Some changes were faster than others: the
speedy diffusion of “its” might reflect the simpler linguistic variable. For
changes nearing completion, some recessive forms had shifted in indexicality
and could signal distance and intimacy—but usually for men. For incipient
changes, some changes from below were initiated by men: “its” by the lower
ranks, and the progressive by professionals. Women’s linguistic initiative and
influence are considered among other sociolinguistic patterns—but in the
earlier periods and in the earlier stages of time a lack of data can obscure
gender trends. 

In the final chapter, Nevalainen takes “A wider sociolinguistic perspective”
(255‒70). Assessing the collection, she describes and explains the partial
evidence for Labov’s “Gender Paradox” (2001: 292‒3)—women often leading
linguistic changes from below while avoiding explicitly proscribed forms. She
provides similar consideration for Labov’s “Curvilinear Principle” (2001:
188)—that mid-range speakers often lead changes from below. The birthplaces of
some informants allow the origins of some mid-range changes to be identified.
And the birthdates and longevity of others allow some contrasts between
apparent-time and real-time studies: clergymen seem least likely to change
their language over their lifetimes. Curiously, individuals’ social mobility
does not correlate significantly with linguistic progressiveness or
conservatism. But the social evaluation of some forms might be inferred from
the interpersonal relations of their users. Archaisms like “hath” and “thou”
might signal a writer’s education or their distance or intimacy with their
correspondent. For the processes studied here, normative grammars seem to have
had less direct influence—except perhaps to have slowed linguistic change in
an age of social upheaval. 

Nevalainen also considers the processes studied in the context of longer-term
changes. The rise of “its” and the progressive complicate the concept that
English is becoming a more analytic language—Szmrecsanyi claims that
syntheticity increases after Early Modern English (2012). The rise of “its”
and loss of “-man” compounds steer what Adamson called “The Great Gender
Shift” (2007) a little further. Indeed, when considering other general causes
of change Nevalainen identifies “[o]ne candidate” as “gender bias in language
variation and change as a corollary of the tradition of distinct male and
female roles in all known societies” (269). The “long-term differences” in the
studies presented here likely reflect “changing social circumstances” that
have to be mapped with a variety of perspectives and methods (269).

EVALUATION

This excellent collection delivers more than the sum of its parts. It is not a
comprehensive overview of eighteenth-century English, however. Readers will
not find an exhaustive bibliography even of normative approaches to language
variation and change. And none of the studies focus(es) on variables that were
much discussed by eighteenth-century grammarians. Indeed, in her chapter on
grammar, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza reminds us of other long-term studies linking
precept and practice—Lieselotte Anderwald on verb morphology, Victorina
González-Díaz on adjective comparison, and of course herself, though she does
not cite her own magisterial monograph on preposition placement (2015). The
present collection focuses sharply on seven case studies. 

In all cases, the authors are long-term experts on their variables. Across
their studies, interesting and significant variation arises from the team’s
rigorously coherent approach. Their array of perspectives should attract and
satisfy a broad audience. English historical linguists will get succinct and
reliable histories of key features more generally. Historical corpus linguists
will learn much from the detailed descriptions and explanations of corpus
structure and statistical approaches. And not just historical sociolinguists
will be interested in the dynamics of language change. (How) does the language
of letters relate to “the language” more generally? Why were most linguistic
conservatives male? Why were only some changes from below led by women? The
scholars in this team engage with big issues and big names, including their
own. 

Scholars in other disciplines can rely on this team’s key findings. Social
historians can speculate on the trends relating to class and profession and
gender. Historians of gender can examine trends in general or individual use.
Indeed, this collection satisfyingly balances attention to groups and
individuals. Literary and theatrical scholars in particular should appreciate
the names in the Tables—individuals who were particularly progressive or
(especially) conservative. Among the recurring names are the poet William
Cowper and the actor David Garrick—the latter missing from the index. But this
collection can be used for purposes unanticipated by indexers. It is both
accessible and searchable thanks to its open source format. 

REFERENCES

Adamson, Sylvia. 2007. Prescribed reading: Pronouns and gender in the
eighteenth century. Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical
Linguistics 7. http://www.hum2.leidenuniv.nl/ hsl_shl/Adamson.htm

Biber, Douglas. 2001. Dimensions of variation among 18th-century speech-based
and written registers. In Hans-Jürgen Diller & Manfred Görlach (eds.), Towards
a history of English as a history of genres (Anglistische Forschungen 298),
89–109. Heidelberg: C. Winter

CEEC = Corpora of Early English Correspondence. Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen,
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg et al. at the Department of Modern Languages,
University of Helsinki. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/CEEC/. (5
May, 2014.) 

CEECE = Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension. Compiled by Terttu
Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Samuli Kaislaniemi, Mikko Laitinen,
Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin, Tanja Säily and Anni Sairio
at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki

Davies, Mark. 2011- Google Books Corpus. Based on Google Books n-grams.
(Michael et al. 2011). https://www.english-corpora.org/googlebooks/

Helsinki Corpus = The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (1991). Department of
Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. Compiled by Matti Rissanen (Project
leader), Merja Kytö (Project secretary); Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpiö
(Old English); Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen (Middle English); Terttu
Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (Early Modern English).

Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change, vol. 1: Internal
factors (Language in Society 20). Oxford, UK & Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.

Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change, vol. 2: Social factors
(Language in Society 29). Oxford: Blackwell.

Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical
sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England (Longman
Linguistics Library). London: Pearson Education.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Analyticity and syntheticity in the history of
English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.), The Oxford
handbook of the history of English, 654–665. Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Carol Percy is Professor of English at the University of Toronto. I study Late
Modern English, standardization and prescriptivism, history of education,
women's studies, and children's literature.<br /><br />My work on the
prescriptivism of authors, editors, male book reviewers, women educators, King
George III, Thomas Jefferson and of course grammarians appears in journals
including Age of Johnson, English Language and Linguistics, and Women's
Writing, and in collections like Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain:
Beliefs, Cultures, Practices, Eighteenth-century English: Ideology and Change,
and The Oxford Handbook of the History of English.<br /><br />As conference
co-organizer, I am also the co-editor of Languages of Nation: Attitudes and
Norms (2012) and Prescription and Tradition in Language (2017).





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