Letter Writing and Language Change

This book draws on a range of informal letter corpora and outlines the historical sociolinguistic value of letter analysis.

Anita Auer (Edited by), Daniel Schreier (Edited by), Richard J. Watts (Edited by)

9781107018648, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 July 2015

352 pages, 20 b/w illus. 34 tables
26.4 x 18.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.82 kg

'Overall, the edited collection makes some significant strides in uncovering multiple histories of a given language, which should inspire similar studies based on personal documents like letters and diaries in other languages too. Hence, the collection can be easily used as a textbook in any advanced sociolinguistics class or a graduate level seminar on language change over time, especially for those interested in letter data for historical studies of any language.' Md Mijanur Rahman, LINGUIST List

Letter Writing and Language Change outlines the historical sociolinguistic value of letter analysis, both in theory and practice. The chapters in this volume make use of insights from all three 'Waves of Variation Studies', and many of them, either implicitly or explicitly, look at specific aspects of the language of the letter writers in an effort to discover how those writers position themselves and how they attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to construct social identities. The letters are largely from people in the lower strata of social structure, either to addressees of the same social status or of a higher status. In this sense the question of the use of 'standard' and/or 'nonstandard' varieties of English is in the forefront of the contributors' interest. Ultimately, the studies challenge the assumption that there is only one 'legitimate' and homogenous form of English or of any other language.

1. Setting the scene, letters, standards and historical sociolinguistics Richard J. Watts
2. Assessing variability and change in early English letters Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre
3. Private letters as a source for an alternative history of Middle New High German Stephan Elspaß
4. Language in print and handwriting Tony Fairman
5. Heterogeneity vs homogeneity Marianne Hundt
6. Emerging standards in the colonies, variation and the Canadian letter writer Stefan Dollinger
7. Linguistic fingerprints of authors and scribes Alexander Bergs
8. Stylistic variation Anita Auer
9. English aristocratic letters Susan Fitzmaurice
10. Early nineteenth-century pauper letters Mikko Laitinen
11. A non-standard standard? Exploring the evidence from nineteenth-century vernacular letters and diaries Barbara Allen
12. Archaism and dialect in Irish emigrant letters Lukas Pietsch
13. Assessing heterogeneity Lucia Siebers
14. Hypercorrection and the persistence of local dialect features in writing Daniel Schreier
15. Epilogue: where next? Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Linguistics [CF]