Benjamin Franklin's English: Form to Function Analyses (Routledge Studies in Linguistics)

This book delves into Benjamin Franklin’s English, illustrating the variable nature of 18th-century American English and his stylistic manipulation of the potentiality of English. Utilizing corpus methodologies, it offers researchers in historical sociolinguistics unique insights.

Benjamin Franklin is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and while his achievements have been well established in the history of America, his linguistic activities have been explored only to a lesser extent. Iyeiri examines his letters and autobiography, which provide linguists with opportunities to study his language. The book is structured using the ‘form-to-function’ framework. The first part focuses on different lexical items one by one, and it can be read in the order readers want, whilst in the second part, Iyeiri stitches the arguments together, discussing various grammatical features across different lexical items.

This book is a fantastic reference for students and scholars of historical linguistics, varieties of English, and World Englishes.

Yoko Iyeiri is Professor of English Language at Kyoto University. Her research interests are in the history of English. Her publications include Negative Constructions in Middle English (Kyushu University Press, 2001) and Verbs of Implicit Negation and their Complements in the History of English (John Benjamins, 2010).