Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England

Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England is the seminal text in the field of historical sociolinguistics. Demonstrating the real-world application of sociolinguistic research methodologies, this book examines the social factors which promoted linguistic changes in English, laying the foundation for Modern Standard English.

This revised edition of Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg’s ground-breaking work:

• discusses the grammatical developments that shaped English in the early modern period;
• presents the sociolinguistic factors affecting linguistic change in Tudor and Stuart English, including gender, social status, and regional variation;
• showcases the authors’ research into personal letters from the people who were the driving force behind these changes; and
• demonstrates how historical linguists can make use of social and demographic history to analyse linguistic variation over an extended period of time.

With brand new chapters on language change and the individual, and on newly developed sociolinguistic research methods, Historical Sociolinguistics is essential reading for all students and researchers in this area.

Terttu Nevalainen is Professor of English Philology and Director of the VARIENG Research Unit in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki.

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg was formerly a Senior Researcher in the Department of English, University of Helsinki.