In Part One (the Orthodox Version) the contributors to this volume show how monolingual explanations of the origins of Standard English are incorrect. Part Two (the Revised Version) provides an alternative sociolinguistic, multilingual history, where it is argued that English came to take over the roles, registers and written conventions of Anglo-Norman French, and that standardisation was the result of fourteenth-century socioeconomic shift.

This volume describes the development of Standard English from Middle English onwards.

Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled ‘Chancery Standard’, provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

The focus on this 3rd ed., as in the previous, remains on the internal history of English, theoretical implications and purely external history are purposely kept to a minimum. As in the earlier editions, too, the treatment is descriptive and traditional so that students with no prior study of linguistics or of languages will find this text accessible.

ANGLAIS (LANGUE), enseignement

Shattering the cliché 'our world is more multilingual than ever before', this book offers the first comprehensive history of our multilingual past.