Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Contributors -- Contributors -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Stylistic devices of Christians expressing contradiction against the Gentiles -- 3 A 'third-wave' historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence: Evidence from the Stonor Letters -- 4 Advice to prospectors (and others). Knowledge dissemination, power and persuasion in Late Modern English emigrants' guides and correspondence -- 5 Language policy in the long nineteenth century: Catalonia and Schleswig -- 6 Authorship and gender in English historical sociolinguistic research: Samples from the Paston Letters -- 7 Dialect death? The present state of the dialects of the Scottish fishing communities -- 8 Orthographic regularization in Early Modern English printed books: Grapheme distribution and vowel length indication -- 9 Diaglossia, individual variation and the limits of standardization: Evidence from Dutch -- 10 'Like a pack-hors trying to copy after an antilope': A case of eighteenth-century non-native English -- 11 A mensa et thoro. On the tense relationship between literacy and the spoken word in early modern times -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Index

Historical sociolinguistics has now established itself as a separate independent field of linguistic inquiry, and the impact of its theoretical and empirical advances are reflected in a thriving body of publications of various types. This volume adds to this flourishing array by presenting nine original studies by highly accomplished scholars holding a prominent reputation in the field. The overarching objective of the volume is to call attention to contemporary trends and innovative developments in the discipline and, more generally, to highlight current research on the relationship between sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, social motivations of language variation and change, and corpus-based studies. The overall interdisciplinary nature of the contributions, the variety of languages they examine and the range of themes they address are distinguishing features of the book, which also make it appealing to a wider readership. The general themes covered by the volume include how to define the historical and social dimensions in historical sociolinguistics research, historical second-language use and multilingualism, the role and relevance played by linguistic ideologies and attitudes in language choices, usage, policy (standardization and preservation), and language death. More specific topics addressed are the linguistic strategies employed to convey and defend religious ideology or to heighten the overall persuasiveness of the information provided. Controversial and/or under-researched issues are tackled, such as authorship and gender in the study of private documents, the regularization and standardization of English orthography, and the issue of speakers' awareness of the dissociation between spoken and written language. In addition, several contributions are methodologically linked by employing data from epistolary correspondence.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Sep. 08, 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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