The Language of Queen Elizabeth I
A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Royal Style and Identity
Will be published approx. on 11. October 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
266 pages
978-1-118-67287-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Language of Queen Elizabeth I presents one of the first diachronic accounts of the language - the idiolect - of the Tudor monarch who ruled England and Ireland from 1558-1603.
* Suggests that Elizabeth I was a leader of language innovation and change, using it to build her complex social identity as a female monarch in a masculine position of power
* Examines a number of the monarch's letters, speeches, and translations
* Establishes Elizabeth I's participation in ten morpho-syntactic changes and explores her spelling practice
* Develops theoretical and methodological frameworks of variationist sociolinguistics through the analysis of the individual speaker
* Argues for the significance of style as a linguistic and material property in our account of language variation and change
Reviews / Votes
"I recommend this work to scholars specialising in Elizabeth I, regardless of their discipline; historical and present-day sociolinguists working particularly with idiolect research; and those interested in historical spelling variation and historical authorship attribution." (Cercles, 1 February 2015)More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
Hoboken
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-118-67287-7 (9781118672877)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mel Evans is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Birmingham. Her research explores the relationship between language variation and change, style, and identity in contemporary and Early Modern English, with a particular interest in the language of the Tudor Court.
Content
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Part 1
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Historical Sociolinguistics
1.2 Research Question 1
1.3 Research Question 2
1.4 Research Question 3
2. The Elizabeth I Corpus (QEIC)
3. Methodology
3.1 Macro-level Corpora
3.2 Comparative Analysis
3.3 Social Factors
3.4 Interactive Factors
3.5 Stylistic Factors
3.6 Systemic Factors
3.7 Linguistic Factors
Part 2: Results and Analysis
4. Affirmative Do
4.1 Results
4.2 Social Factors
4.3 Systemic Factors
4.4 Interactive Factors
4.5 Stylistic Factors
4.6 Summary
5. Negative Do
5.1 Results
5.2 Systemic Factors
5.3 Social Factors
5.4 Interactive Factors
5.5 Stylistic Factors
5.6 Summary
6. The Replacement of Ye by You
6.1 Results
6.2 Social Factors
6.3 Stylistic Factors
6.4 Interactive and Systemic Factors
6.5 Summary
7. First- and Second-Person Possessive Determiners
7.1 Results
7.2 Social Factors
7.3 Stylistic Factors
7.4 Interactive Factors
7.5 Summary
8. Multiple Negation vs. Single Negation
8.1 Results
8.2 Systemic Factors
8.3 Social Factors
8.4 Stylistic Factors
8.5 Summary
9. Animacy and Relative Marker: who/which
9.1 Results
9.2 Systemic Factors
9.3 Social Factors
9.4 Interactive Factors
9.5 Stylistic Factors
9.6 Objective case: whom/which
9.7 Summary
10. Which and The Which
10.1 Results
10.2 Social Factors
10.3 Systemic Factors
10.4 Stylistic Factors
10.5 Interactive Factors
10.6 Summary
11. Superlative Adjectives
11.1 Results
11.2 Systemic Factors
11.3 Interactive Factors
11.4 Stylistic Factors
11.5 Double Forms
11.6 Results
11.7 Stylistic Factors
11.8 Summary
12. Royal We and Other Pronouns of Self-Reference
12.1 Background
12.2 Results
12.3 Interactive Factors
12.4 Stylistic Factors
12.5 Comparison with Other Royal Idiolects
12.6 Other Pronouns of Self-Reference
12.7 Summary
13. Spelling
13.1 Background
13.2 Methodology
13.3 Results: Spelling Consistency
13.4 Diachronic Consistency
13.5 Graph Combinations
13.6 Final
13.7 and
13.8 Combinations
13.9 , and
13.10 and
13.11 and
13.12 and
13.13 Idiosyncrasies and Spelling Reform
13.14 Summary
Part 3: Research Questions
14. Research Question 1
14.1 The Gender Question
14.2 Summary
15. Research Question 2
15.1 Case Study 1: The Seymour Letters
15.2 Case Study 2: 1576 Parliamentary Speech
15.3 Case Study 3: The CEEC Hoby Letter
15.4 Case Study 4: 1597 Prayer
15.5 Summary
16. Research Question 3
16.1 Idiolects and Idiosyncrasy
16.2 Adolescence and Adulthood
16.3 Linguistic Leadership
16.4 Innovators, Early Adopters and Networks
16.5 Explaining Progressiveness: Communities of Practice
16.6 Hypercorrection and Linguistic Leadership
16.7 Stylistic Variation and Historical Sociolinguistics
17. Final Word
Part 4: Appendix
18. Tabular Data
19. The Queen Elizabeth I Corpus (QEIC)
19.1 Correspondence
19.2 Speeches
19.3 Translations
19.4 Queen Elizabeth I Corpus: Text Information
Textual Sources
References