Cultural History of

Early Modern England

Raymond Hickey
English Linguistics
Campus Essen
English monarchs from the late Middle English period onwards

House of York
1461-1470 Edward IV

House of Lancaster
1470-1471 Henry VI

House of York
1471-1483 Edward IV 1483 Edward V
1483-1485 Richard III

House of Tudor
1485-1509 Henry VII 1547-1553 Edward VI
1509-1547 Henry VIII 1553-1558 Mary I
1558-1603 Elizabeth I

House of Stuart
1603-1625 James I (James VI of Scotland)
1625-1649 Charles I
English monarchs (continued)

Commonwealth and Protectorate

1649-1653 Council of State 1653-1658 Oliver Cromwell

1658-1659 Richard Cromwell

House of Stuart (restored)

1660-1685 Charles II 1689-1694 William III (with Mary II)

1685-1688 James II 1694-1702 William III (alone)
1702-1714 Anne

House of Hanover

1714-1727 George I 1820-1830 George IV

1727-1760 George II 1830-1837 William IV
1760-1820 George III 1837-1901 Victoria
English monarchs (continued)

House of Saxe-Coburg

1901-1910 Edward VII

House of Windsor

1910-1936 George V 1936-1952 George VI

1936 Edward VIII 1952- Elizabeth II
The Protestant Reformation in England
House of Henry VIII (1509-1547), known popularly
Tudor for his six wives, two of whom he had
executed, introduced the Reformation into
England and established the English
monarch as head of the Church of England
(the Anglican Church).
 The dissolution of the
monasteries in 1538 greatly
increased Henry’s power as king.
Jervaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, one of the largest
monasteries destroyed under Henry VIII’s reign
 The Thirty-Nine Articles

In 1563, the Thirty-Nine

Articles of Religion,
made a Protestantism
the official religion, i.e. it
confirmed the Church of
England as state
religion.
 Elizabeth I (1558-1603),
daughter of Anne Boleyn
(Henry VIII’s second wife)
was a resolute defender of
Protestantism as the state
religion of England.
 Protestantism and the ‘Four Nations’

Of the four nations of the British Isles, England became

Protestant with the Anglican Church as the state religion.
Both Scotland and Wales also followed. But in these regions, so-
called non-conformist varieties of Protestantism prevailed: (i)
Prebyterianism in Scotland (still under the administration of the
Kirk of Scotland) and (ii) Methodism (and later Quakerism) in
Wales.
Ireland remained Catholic. This held for the native population and
the first settlers from England, the Anglo-Normans. In the north
of Ireland (Ulster) Scottish Presbyterians settled in the early 17th
century, adding religious tension to the island of Ireland.
Major linguistic developments at
the outset of the Early Modern
Period
 The Great Vowel Shift

The major change to affect the sound system of Middle

English is that which resulted in a re-alignment of the
system of long vowels and diphthongs which is
traditionally known as the Great Vowel Shift. Essentially
long vowels are raised one level and the two high vowels
are diphthongised. The shift took several centuries to
complete and is still continuing in Cockney (popular
London speech). The shift of short /u/ to a lower vowel
as in present-day southern English but, which began in
the mid 17th century, is not part of the vowel shift.
The chronology of recent sound changes
 Tudor
England
(16th
century)
Contemporary writers of Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe Ben Jonson Edmund Spenser

Groups of authors (late 16th and 17th centuries)

The Metaphysical poets

This is a group of poets who are taken to have started with
John Donne (1572-1631) and whose work is characterised by
extravagent comparisons, reserved feelings and a display of
learning. The school continued well into the 17th century,
among the later representatives is Andrew Marvell (1621-78).
The major poetic figure of the 17th century is John Milton
(1608-74), the writer of sonnets, elegies and the epics
Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671). He was
also a significant pamphleteer and involved in political
activities.
Groups of authors (late 16th and 17th centuries)

Jacobean drama
A general term for drama as produced in the reign of James I (James VI of
Scotland, 1603-25). Indeed it continued into the reign of Charles I (1625-49) until
the closure of the theatres in 1642. The most important dramatist of this time
(apart of course from Shakespeare) is probably Ben Jonson (1572/3-1637)

Restoration drama
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles II (1660-85) the
theatres were re-opened and a flourishing set in, chiefly of comedy, which lasted
for much of the remaining 17th century.
 The King James bible of 1611 The Book of Common Prayer
(known as the Authorized Version) (revised version of 1662)
 The Earliest English
Dictionary
(Robert Cawdrey, 1604)
The question of a standard for English
16th and 17th century authors concerned with standard pronunciation

John Hart (d. 1574) in An orthographie of English (1569) offers a

reformed spelling of English so that ‘the rude countrie Englishman’ can
speak the language ‘as the best sort use to speak it’.

George Puttenham (d. 1590) in The arte of English poesie comments

that ‘After a speach is fully fashioned to the common vnderstanding, &
accepted by consent of a whole countrey & nation, it is called a
language’. He then proceeds to mention that he regards the prime form of
this language as ‘the vsuall speach of the Court and that of London and
the shires lying about London within lx. myles and not much aboue’

About a century later, Christopher Cooper in his Grammatica linguae

anglicanae (1685) stated that he regarded London speech as ‘the best
dialect’, the ‘most pure and correct’, but he was quite liberal towards
variation: ‘Everyone pronounceth them (words) as himself pleases’.
The Augustan age

The early to mid 18th century was a period during which satire flourished
in England (and Ireland). The main authors are Joseph Addison (1672-
1719), John Dryden (1631-1700), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Sir
Richard Steele (1672-1729) and the Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667-
1745), the latter being particularly concerned with questions of language
and entertaining generally conservative views on language change. The
term Augustan is derived from the comparison of this age to that of the
Roman Emperor Augustus under whose reign Horace, Ovid and Virgil
flourished, authors who the latter-day English writers also admired.
The rise of lexicography in the 18th century

The middle of the 18th century sees the rise of the novel (initially in
epistolary form) and the publication of the first major lexicographical
work, the monolingual dictionary Dictionary of the English language
(1755) by Samuel Johnson which was a model for all future
lexicographers. (Johnson drew on the dictionaries of Nathaniel Bailey -
such as the Universal etymological English dictionary (1721), with some
40,000 entries, and the Dictionarium Brittanicum (1730) - for the word list
he used in his own).
 Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English writer and lexicographer. Johnson was a major
critic and scholar who was known both for his brilliant
conversation and the quality of his writing. As a man of
letters his influence on literature in his day and later
periods was considerable. His significance for linguistics
lies in the fact that he compiled the first major
monolingual dictionary of English, his Dictionary of the
English language (1755), which was a model for all future
lexicographers.
The legacy of Samuel Johnson
Johnson’s dictionary became the standard work
of English lexicography because of its range,
objectivity and use of quotations from major
authors to back up definitions given. It was not
until over a century later that it was superseded
by the dictionary which was to become the
Oxford English Dictionary.
Prescriptivism in England
 English in 18th century Britain

The rise of prescriptivism and the development of the

standard of English in 18th-century Britain: Dictionaries,
grammars and works on elocution (the art of public
speaking, later of accepted pronunciation) appeared in the
second half of the 18th century. They were intended to fix
the public usage of English. Some of these works are
shown in the following table and more information on four
of the major authors is given below.
 Robert Lowth (1710-1787)
Author of a normative grammar A Short
Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which
achieved great popularity for the manner in which
it made recommendations for grammatical
usage, something which was interpreted as very
prescriptive, even though this may not have been
intended as such. Lowth was professor of poetry
in Oxford and later bishop of Oxford and of
London (as of 1777).
The legacy of Robert Lowth

Lowth is perceived as the original prescriptivist in English grammar

and indeed he made statements which match this perception such
as the following:
‘The principle design of a Grammar of any Language is to teach us
to express ourselves with propriety in that Language; and to enable
us to judge of every phrase and form of construction, whether it be
right or not’.
He certainly promoted the concern with correctness in grammar and
hence was in large degree responsible for the types of evaluative
statements about people’s language which came to be common
from the late 18th century onwards in the English-speaking world.
Some of Lowth’s strictures

1) Don’t use double negation

I did not see no person in the room.

2) Don’t end a sentence in a preposition

This is the book we were looking for.

3) Don’t put anything between to and a following infinitive

She asked him to carefully mark the papers.
Sheridan, Thomas (1719-1788)
Irish writer, born in Dublin and
educated in London and Dublin. He
was first an actor and is the author
of a farce The Brave Irishman; or
Captain O’Blunder (1743; published
1754).
Later he became a travelling expert
on elocution. Sheridan produced A
Course of Lectures on Elocution
(1762), A Rhetorical Grammar of
the English language (1788) and A
General Dictionary of the English
Language (1780) in which he gives
guidelines for the correct use of
English.
Sheridan was firmly rooted in
the ‘complaint tradition’ of
English writing and lamented
the state of British education
in his day.
But he was also a
manipulator who generated
linguistic insecurity among his
readers then offered relief in
his many prescriptive
regulations.
This type of strategy can be
found among prescriptivists to
this very day.
Sheridan A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780)
Walker, John (1732-1807)
A Londoner and prescriptive
author of the late 18th
century, best known for his
Critical pronouncing
dictionary (1791) which
enjoyed great popularity in
its day.
Just as Samuel Johnson had
saught patronage for his dictionary
from Lord Chesterfield (Philip
Dormer Stanhope, 1694-1773),
Walker appealed to the famous
actor David Garrick (1717-1779) for
similar support for his dictionary.
Both authors did this by dedicating
the plan for their respective
dictionaries to their would-be
patrons.
 The legacy of Sheridan and Walker
Did the strictures of Walker or Sheridan influence the later pronunciation of
non-local British English? The answer to this question must be ‘no’. In
some cases Walker, as opposed to Sheridan, favoured a form which was
later to become default in English, e.g. merchant for marchant. But this did
not happen because of Walker’s opinion on the matter.

In many respects, Walker was swimming against the tide of language

change. His insistence on maintaining regular patterns of pronunciation
across the language (his ‘analogy’) and, above all, his view that the spoken
word should be close to the written word, meant that he favoured archaic
pronunciations. His view that syllable-final /r/ should be pronounced was
already conservative in his day. In many of his statements he does,
however, accept change although he might not have agreed with it.

The legacy of both Sheridan and Walker should be seen in more general
terms. Even if their individual recommendations were not accepted by
standard speakers of British English, both were responsible for furthering
general notions of prescriptivism. And certainly both contributed in no small
way to the perennial concern with pronunciation which characterises
British society to this day.
The English concern
with pronunciation

Pronunciation in English is a yardstick

of one‘s language. More than
European countries, the English judge
the standardness of someone’s
speech by its phonetics.
The ideal which arose during the 18th
century and established itself in the
19th century was that one’s speech
was not to betray where one came
from, i.e. regional accents were
frowned upon.
 Self-appointed
authorities on English

Henry Watson Fowler (1858-

1933) was an English
lexicographer whose principal
work is A Dictionary of Modern
English Usage (1926; later
revised by Sir Ernest Gowers
in 1965). This is a loosely
structured commentary on
English usage and style.
Together with his brother he
also wrote The King’s English
(1906).
Issues in Standard English today
Inside and outside the standard: What slipped through the
prescriptivists’ net

I see what you mean; I seen him yesterday; I’ve seen those students.
I do my work every week; I done the work yesterday; I’ve done that task.
This type of distribution leads to spurious objections to non-standard forms:
two-form verbs involve fewer distinctions and are hence sloppy, lazy,
inaccurate, etc. But are they? Just look as this:
I hit the main road at eight every morning.
I hit the curb going around the curve.
I’ve hit that curb before.
The same is true of other verbs like bet, cast, etc.
Persistent non-standard features

1) Them as a demonstrative pronoun

Them teachers are annoying.
2) Second person plural personal pronouns
You (plural) = ye, youse, yuns, y’all. Nowadays = you guys
3) Negative concord
We’re not going to no party. I’m not giving no money to nobody.
4) Unmarked adverbs
He did the work real well.

5) Double comparisons
That’s more worse than the first one.
General characteristics of standard languages

Standard forms of language maintain seemingly irrational features. These make

the standard more difficult to acquire, less intuitive. James and Lesley Milroy are
of this opinion.

The maintenance of the third personal singular inflection in the present-tense of

verbs is just such a case. Dialects of English have either dropped this inflection
(East Anglia for instance) or they have re-analysed the ending and use it for a
specific purpose, e.g. for an habitual – I goes there every morning - or have
established correspondences between the inflections and the nature of the
verb’s subject (Northern Subject Rule).

Despite its own ideology of immutability, even the standard continues to develop.
The gradual shift of verb forms from strong to weak is a case in point. dive :
dove: dived has been more or less replaced by dive : dived : dived in present-
day English. Another example would be the use of a continuous form with so-
called ‘psych’-verbs, e.g. I’m wanting to go there for I want to go there.
English in the 19th century
Henry Sweet (1845-1912) Walter William Skeat
(1835-1912)
major English philologist of
the 19th century major English lexicographer
of the 19th century
19th century to the present

More than in any other European country England is marked by

an emphasis on standard pronunciation. The type of
pronounciation known today as Received Pronunciation (after
Daniel Jones) or under other less precise epithets such as The
Queen’s English, Oxford English, BBC English, etc. is a sociolect
of English, that is, it is the variety of English spoken by the
educated middle classes, irrespective of what part of England
they may live in. In the nineteenth century and into this century
as well, this accent of English was that fostered by the so-called
public schools (private, fee-paying schools) which were the
domain of the middle class. It is also the variety which foreigners
are exposed to when they learn ‘British English’.
 The codification of
Received Pronunciation
Daniel Jones (1881-1967)
major English phonetician
of the 20th century
 The Oxford
English Dictionary
A New English Dictionary on
Historical Principles

A proposal was made by Richard Trench in 1857 to the

Philological Society to design a new dictionary which
would serve as a definitive work on the vocabulary of
English with complete historical coverage. The Scotsman
James Murray (1837-1915) became the main editor (see
inset on right). The first letter was published as a volume
in 1888 and all the 12 vols were completed in 1928. A
thirteenth supplement volume came out in 1933 (after
which it was called the Oxford English Dictionary
published by Oxford University Press. The twenty-volume
second edition appeared in 1989 (this is also available
electronically). Work on a much expanded third edition is
underway at present.
 James Murray (1837-
1915), main editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary
Publication history
of the Oxford
English Dictionary
Various book versions
of the Oxford English
Dictionary
Electronic versions of
the Oxford English
Dictionary
Studies on the Oxford
English Dictionary
Works on etymology
(the history of
meanings)
Books on New Words
The development of modern
English
A standard work
(published in
2004) on the late
modern period
(1700-present)
A recent overview
(published in May
2009) by a leading
expert on 18th
century English.
Published by
Edinburgh
University Press.
A more flexible view
of how standard
English is evolving
(published in 1999)
Outside the mainstream:
the history of varieties of
English apart from
southern British English
There are many persistent
misconceptions about
language. This book
examines a range of these
and discusses them
objectively.
A critical look at
the way in which
notions of standard
language are used
manipulatively and
to exclude others.
Every language which is
spoken is changing. This
study looks at the ways in
which standard varieties
of English have been
evolving in the past
hundred years or so.
Beyond national
borders: the idea of
World Englishes

English is increasingly seen in

a global context, one in which
the language is divorced from
its origins in England. As a
result of this, notions of
standard English,deriving from
Britain and America, are seen
as increasingly inappropriate
for the non-western world.
Other introductions to World Englishes
 Authority in printed form:
major dictionaries of English
(British and American)
 Dictionaries with a different
approach: ‘real English’, ‘the
living language’
Views of the development of the
English language today
(note the use of the article and the singular
versus the plural in the following books)
 The Language
Industry in
Today’s Society
There is
plenty of
well-meant
advice
available
for those
uncertain
about what
is ‘correct
grammar’
Books on mastering / using grammar
 Correct
grammar and
appearing
‘educated’
Making
fun of
others’
mistakes
Linguistic insecurity:
What is the ‘correct’ form?
Yes, grammar matters, but . . .
What should the teachers do?
It depends on the context. If you are
teaching English, especially in a foreign
language context, then you must make
sure that your students learn standard
forms, hence the need for correction.
If there is tension between the vernacular
of a student (his/her native dialect) and
the standard then you should stress that
the standard is just one form of language
without any inherent claim to superiority
over colloquial forms. But it is the form
used publicly and hence when in a public
context it is advisable to use at least a
modified form of the standard to avoid
censure by others.
 And what is the
linguist’s
standpoint?
The standard is one form of
language which by historical
accident became that which is
preferred in writing and in public
usage. There is nothing better
about the standard or worse about
colloquial speech or dialects.
Be tolerant and put aside any
prejudice you might feel about
certain pronunciations, words or
turns of phrase!
References (selection)
Bauer, Laurie and Peter Trudgill (eds) 1998. Language Myths. New York:
Penguin.
Bex, Tony and Richard J. Watts (eds) 1999. Standard English. The widening
debate. London: Routledge.
Crowley, Tony 2003. Standard English and the Politics of Language. Second
edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Deumert, Ana and Wim Vandenbussche (eds) 2003. Germanic
Standardizations. Past to Present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hickey, Raymond 2010. Eighteenth-Century English. Ideology and Change.
Cambridge: University Press.
Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy 1991. Authority in language. Investigating
language prescription and standardisation. 2nd edition. Language,
Education and Society London: Blackwell.
Trudgill, Peter and Richard Watts (eds) 2001. Alternative histories of English.
London: Routledge.
Wardhaugh, Ronald 1999. Proper English. Myths and Misunderstandings about
Language. Oxford: Blackwell.