The volume under review, Patterns of change in 18th-century English: A sociolinguistic approach, is the eighth to appear in the series Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics by John Benjamins. It joins six other edited volumes and two monographs, all of which make important contributions to the field by exploring new research avenues in a variety of languages. Some volumes in the series examine specific genres, others particular language communities, but a common denominator for all is an interest, to a greater or lesser extent, in the eighteenth century. The present volume is no exception, with its clear focus on the sociolinguistics of linguistic change in eighteenth-century (British) English letters connecting it to the other publications in the series.
The editors of the volume, as well as most of the other contributors, are associated with VARIENG (Research Unit for the Study of Variation, Contacts and Change in English), founded in 1995 at the University of Helsinki. Over the years scholars from this group have produced pioneering research in the field of historical sociolinguistics, fostering corpus linguistic work through corpora such as the Corpora (formerly Corpus) of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) and inspiring countless studies and research collaborations at an international level. It therefore comes as no surprise that the search for ‘patterns of change’ presented in this volume should be based on the textual evidence contained in the CEEC and its eighteenth-century extension (CEECE). Together with Raumolin-Brunberg, Nevalainen had earlier already laid important groundwork for historical sociolinguistic research in the edited volume Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Reference Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg1996) and in the monograph Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England (1st edition 2003, 2nd edition 2017), which highlighted the value of the CEEC as well. Patterns of change is in many ways a continuation of the monograph, transposing its theoretical and methodological framework to the eighteenth century.
The edited volume comprises sixteen chapters and is divided into three parts. With ten contributors overall (the editorial team stemming the bulk of the work), the (sub)chapters in this volume are either single-authored or collaborations by groups of two to four authors. Part I, ‘Introduction and background’, with five chapters, provides theoretical, methodological and sociohistorical information relevant to the research presented in part II, ‘Studies’, which contains seven linguistic case studies. Part III, ‘Changes in retrospect’, offers a synthesis and evaluation in four chapters of the findings presented earlier in the volume.
In chapter 1, ‘Approaching change in 18th-century English’, Nevalainen outlines the main aims, structure and underlying framework of this volume. Adopting a variationist approach, the collected studies investigate long-term linguistic changes in their wider social context on the basis of letters in the CEECE. The sociolinguistic embedding and the rate of change of these processes form a key concern in the studies, which also consider gender differentiation, social stratification, and the role of regional background and age in linguistic change. The volume deliberately strives to ‘provide empirical and thematic continuity for the processes of change observed in the previous centuries’ (p. 4), which are presented in Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg (Reference Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg2003). In consequence, two subchapters are devoted to a concise summary of the sociolinguistic framework and main findings of the earlier research collaboration, providing the backdrop relevant for the remainder of the volume.
Chapter 2, ‘Society and culture in the long 18th century’, also by Nevalainen, sketches the socio-cultural environment in which the linguistic studies in part II are embedded. The author discusses possible demarcation points of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, major political, economic and social developments, social stratification and literacy levels, as well as the concept of politeness as one instantiation of the cultural climate of the time. Two infoboxes are appended to this chapter. In the first, Nevalainen illustrates the social diversity of writers in the CEECE, briefly contextualising the individuals’ lives in the light of the preceding chapter. In the second, Nurmi & Nevala link the notion of polite society with rhetorical and stylistic concerns of the time, and comment on prevalent ways of learning the skill of letter-writing. Their claim that letter-writing manuals were aimed at ‘the upper stratum of society’ (p. 26) needs qualifying. Bannet (Reference Bannet2005), Mitchell (Reference Mitchell, Dossena and Del Lungo Camiciotti2012) and Auer (Reference Auer, Auer, Schreier and Watts2015), for instance, have shown that the target audience of such manuals explicitly included the middling classes, and to a lesser degree also the lower classes.
With ‘Grammar writing in the eighteenth century’, Yáñez-Bouza describes in chapter 3 an important aspect of the codification and prescription stages pertaining to the standardisation of English. The author outlines the increasing importance of grammars over the course of the century, their changing readership and how they slowly moved away from Latin-based grammar models to English-oriented treatises. While grammars are noted to be primarily concerned with standardising language and propounding prescriptivist rules, in some cases they also portray a certain degree of tolerance for linguistic variation at the time. Nevertheless, grammars are found to impact the linguistic usage of upwardly mobile individuals as well as long-term language change. The case studies in this volume will consider the influence of both internal and external processes on language change, the latter being represented by normative grammar writing.
The following two chapters present the data source and research methods employed in the case studies of part II. In chapter 4, ‘The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE)’, Kaislaniemi (in part assisted by Hakala) provides an overview of the creation of the CEEC family of corpora, with a focus on the compilation of the CEECE, its coverage and coding system, which includes sociolinguistic information. The balance and representativeness of the CEECE are affected by social changes, which were the topic of chapter 2. Increasing literacy levels, for example, allowed the compilers of the CEECE to include more letters by women as well as by writers from the lower classes than was possible for earlier centuries in the CEEC. Information on which parts of the CEEC family of corpora are used in the case studies is given in a longer footnote. In a concluding infobox, Hakala details the data retrieval processes for the corpus-based case studies in part II.
Chapter 5 details ‘Research methods: Periodization and statistical techniques’ as applied in the case studies of this volume. In section 5.1, ‘Quantifying change’, Nevalainen shows how the Labovian five stages of linguistic change can be linked with the rate and diffusion of change. This allows researchers, for instance, to compare real-time change with apparent-time patterns, and test hypotheses regarding the diffusion and sociolinguistic patterning of change. Section 5.2, also by Nevalainen, compares four ‘Basic methods for estimating frequencies’, their reliability and potential limitations for the interpretation of heterogeneous diachronic and/or sociolinguistic data groups. These methods are applied to studies investigating changes with an identifiable and retrievable linguistic variable. In section 5.3, Säily, Nurmi & Sairio illustrate two ‘Methods for studying changes lacking a variable’, the first being based on accumulation curves and permutation testing, the second on beanplots and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Both methods are shown to be more robust than those treated in section 5.2, and allow more detailed visualisations of results.
Part II opens with three case studies on changes nearing completion or completed in the eighteenth century. The first is on the contextual use of thou in the eighteenth century by Nevala (chapter 6, ‘“Ungenteel” and “rude”? On the use of thou in the eighteenth century’). Giving a brief overview of the historical development of this pronoun, Nevala also presents social and prescriptivist views on thou in the eighteenth century. Evidence in the CEECE suggests that by this time, when thou is only marginally used, its main discourse function in letters is to construct interpersonal identity, both in terms of instrumentality (indexing status and power) and intimacy (indexing familiarity). In chapter 7, ‘Going to completion: The diffusion of verbal -s’, Nevalainen investigates the sociolinguistic diffusion of third-person singular -s at the expense of -th in the high-frequency verbs have, do and say, a change going to completion in the early eighteenth century. Women are shown to lead the change, and it first reaches completion in the nobility and the gentry. Individual variation in the use of the outgoing -th suffix can be observed throughout the century. Some conservative writers are influenced by regional usage, others (but not all) employ verbal -th to express closeness. Normative grammars support the outgoing forms to some degree, and with its association with formal and religious language hath remained an acceptable choice for clergymen and educated male professionals in particular. In chapter 8, ‘Periphrastic do in eighteenth-century correspondence’, Nurmi explores periphrastic do in affirmative statements. Nurmi reports on the uses of periphrastic do up to the present day, as well as on the conflicting views of normative grammarians on this construction. Periphrastic do already being very infrequent by the beginning of the eighteenth century, Nurmi cannot find any evidence of social variation in the CEECE, with the exception of a slight overuse by the upper gentry. The construction mostly seems to appear with first-person singular subjects, and increasingly with verbs of emotions, which may be indicative of the use of do for emphasis.
The following two case studies focus on ongoing linguistic changes. In chapter 9, ‘Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference: Recessive and ongoing’, Laitinen investigates indefinite pronouns with singular human reference, where two overlapping changes are at work. Firstly, during the course of the eighteenth century forms in -body oust those in -man, and secondly, forms in -one win over the independent forms involving some, any, every and each. The incoming variants, -body and -one, are favoured by the upper social strata, and women are shown to be early adopters, whereas men retain recessive -man and independent forms for longer. Regional variation can be seen in that writers from the North are often more conservative than those from London and East Anglia. In chapter 10, ‘Ongoing change: The diffusion of the third-person neuter possessive its’, Palander-Collin discusses third-person neuter possessive its, an innovation which began nearing completion after 1760 and was not completed until the mid-nineteenth century. Connecting to earlier research, Palander-Collin finds evidence that this was both a communal and a generational change, and that regional variation (the South being more progressive) was prevalent before the change was socially embedded. Its being a low-frequency variable presents a challenge for analysing gender and individual variation. The data suggest, however, that professionals and men lead the change, while women take over in the late eighteenth century; in their choice of variants conservative individuals may be affected by grammatical factors, which appear to be levelled out during the course of the century.
The final two case studies explore phenomena at the onset of change or where stylistic variation, rather than language change, may be the order of the day. Sairio is concerned with the progressive aspect in chapter 11, ‘Incipient and intimate: The progressive aspect’. Not expanding in frequency and function until the nineteenth century, the progressive appears but infrequently in the CEECE. Nevertheless, Sairio's findings are suggestive of later developments regarding gender variation, social rank and context of use: women begin to use the progressive more often towards the end of the eighteenth century, and this informal linguistic feature is particularly prominent in the writing of lower ranks as well as in correspondence between nuclear family members. In chapter 12, ‘Change or variation? Productivity of the suffixes -ness and -ity’, Säily discusses the productivity of these two suffixes in the eighteenth century. The Latinate suffix is used particularly productively and creatively by professional men, especially when writing to entertain or impress friends. The productivity of -ity seems to rise for stylistic reasons. Derivates in -ity are used to express traits more frequently, making them more suitable for letters (which shift towards a more involved and elaborated style), and for the more involved writing style typical of women in particular. Although the productivity of -ness does not increase, longer new formations which are based on a derivation or compound seem to become more popular; yet at least one normative writer objects to these, preferring the elegance of shorter words in -ity.
Part III summarises and evaluates the findings presented earlier in the volume. In chapter 13, ‘Zooming out: Overall frequencies and Google Books’. Säily & Laitinen present a diachronic overview of the linguistic phenomena discussed in the case studies in terms of normalised frequencies. They also critically explore Google Books as an additional source of linguistic information. Owing to shortcomings regarding representativeness, search possibilities affecting precision, in particular, and lack of sociolinguistic information, this database needs to be treated with caution despite its improvements over the years. Where fairly specific searches are possible, results will more closely reflect those of rigorous investigations based on carefully designed linguistic corpora. In other cases, but not all, it might be used as a way of confirming findings from more fine-grained analyses. The linguistic behaviour of outliers, identified as conservative or progressive individuals in the case studies, is examined by Säily in chapter 14, ‘Conservative and progressive individuals’. While the same outlier does not often show the same position towards different linguistic changes, some interesting patterns still emerge. For instance, consistently conservative individuals tend to be men (often clergy), whereas those who are consistently progressive tend to be professionals, some represented in CEECE even moving in the same social network. Overall women appear to be more progressive than men, bearing out modern sociolinguistic findings. Social mobility on the other hand was not shown to be a major factor influencing speaker choice. In chapter 15, ‘Changes in different stages’, the linguistic changes investigated in the case studies are discussed in groups according to the stage reached in the eighteenth century, firstly changes ranging from incipient to mid-range and beyond (Palander-Collin, Laitinen, Sairio & Säily), secondly those which are completed or are nearing completion (Nevalainen, Laitinen, Nevala & Nurmi). The focus lies on the time courses of the changes as well as their diverse and variable sociolinguistic patterning. Pertinent information is concisely displayed in a summary table chronicling the years 1680 to 1800 in twenty-year subperiods. Bringing the volume to a close, Nevalainen highlights in chapter 16 (‘A wider sociolinguistic perspective’) the extent to which the results of the case studies mirror the findings of sociolinguistic research on Present-day English. Noting that modern sociolinguistic frameworks can in principle be adopted for historical studies, she emphasises that cumulative research based on multiple sources and approaches is likely to offer the most in-depth and detailed picture of sociolinguistic variation and language change in historical stages of English.
It is rare to find a volume edited by a team and written by multiple authors which is so coherent in terms of content and methodology, and where the findings of individual case studies are (or even can be) amalgamated in such an extensive, informative and forward-thinking way. A combination of different statistical and analytical methods allows the authors to delve deeper into the historical material than hitherto possible. The volume consequently abounds with examples, tables and colour graphs which usefully visualise linguistic data. Significant efforts were made by all involved to discuss the why? how? and who? of observed variation and change, and to link both findings and hypotheses to earlier research in historical and modern sociolinguistics. A particular strength of this volume is its focus on the individual and their linguistic behaviour in the context of generational and communal change. It is therefore unfortunate that in an otherwise carefully designed index the relevant page numbers listed in the entry for individuals should be incomplete. Overall, this volume successfully demonstrates the merits of the notion of ‘layered simultaneity’, a holistic and multidisciplinary research perspective on historical material advocated by Nevalainen (Reference Nevalainen2015) and Säily et al. (Reference Säily, Nurmi, Palander-Collin, Auer, Säily, Nurmi, Palander-Collin and Auer2017). The framework and approaches adopted in this volume are bound to stimulate future research in historical sociolinguistics, and will be of interest to more advanced undergraduates and established scholars alike.
