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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 312

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The Sociolinguistic Reconstruction of Generational and Communal Patterns of Change in Late Fifteenth-Century English Correspondence

Authors: Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel; Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo
Submitted by: Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel (University of Murcia, Spain)

Research based on corpora of historical correspondence has not only confirmed the relevance of letters to reconstruct the sociolinguistic contexts of language changes in the past, it has also sanctioned the historical validity of some ‘sociolinguistic universals’ ―like, among others, the curvilinear hypothesis, the distinctions between ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ prestige, ‘changes from above’ and ‘changes from below’― and has often permitted to trace the diffusion of historically attested changes over the social, geographical and temporal spaces, as well as to establish their connection to age, social status, occupation, gender and mobility (see: Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 2003; Conde-Silvestre 2007; Hernández-Campoy & Conde-Silvestre 2012).

The sociolinguistic possibilities of late fifteenth century English private correspondence are, in this sense, outstanding, in so far as it belongs to a crucial period in the development of the English language ―an early stage in the normative formation of a letter writing tradition. As such, the value of these epistolary documents from the past is two-fold: on the one hand, they show the evolution of the incipient standard language, and, on the other, they provide us with a measure of the vernacular linguistic reality present both in their writers and the period. Moreover, the preservation of letters written by members of the same family over several generations (such as those included in the Paston or the Cely correspondence) ensures that the sociolinguistic diffusion of changes in the course of time can also be traced, and that attempts can  be made to track individual and community behaviours in this respect. In this paper we intend to reconstruct the patterns of chronological diffusion of changes in progress in the fifteenth century, in connection to the individual repertoires of letter-writers from the above-mentioned collections, with the final aim of testing the historical validity of two constructs widely attested in contemporary situations: ‘generational’ and ‘communal’ changes.

References:

Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo. (2007). Sociolingüística Histórica. Madrid: Gredos.

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

Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo. (eds.)(2012). The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.