A Companion to the History of the English Language
Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
1. Edition April 2011
724 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
This Companion, now available in a paperback format, brings together more than 60 distinguished contributors to offer a wide-ranging survey of the history of the English language. Many of the essays investigate regional and ethnic varieties and take up issues of and gender. The book explores the diverse approaches to the study of English in one volume, ranging from linguistics and etymology to the philosophy of language and literary history. A meeting ground for students of language and literature, this broad-ranging volume considers cultural, social, literary, material, and theoretical approaches to the study of language.
A Companion to the History of the English Language addresses the linguistic, cultural, social, and literary approaches to language study. The first text to offer a complete survey of the field, this volume provides the most up-to-date insights of leading international scholars.
* An accessible reference to the history of the English language
* Comprises more than sixty essays written by leading international scholars
* Aids literature students in incorporating language study into their work
* Includes an historical survey of the English language, from its Germanic and Indo- European beginnings to modern British and American English
* Enriched with maps, diagrams, and illustrations from historical publications
* Introduces the latest scholarship in the field
Notes on Contributors.
Acknowledgments.
Note on Phonetic Symbols and Orthography.
A Timeline for HEL.
Part I Introduction.
1 History, English, Language: Studying HEL Today (Michael Matto and Haruko Momma).
2 History of the History of the English Language: How Has the Subject Been Studied? (Thomas Cable).
3 Essential Linguistics (Mary Blockley).
Part II Linguistic Survey.
4 Phonology: Segmental Histories (Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell).
5 History of English Morphology (Robert McColl Millar).
6 History of English Syntax (Olga Fischer).
7 A History of the English Lexicon (Geoffrey Hughes).
8 History of English Prosody (Geoffrey Russom).
Part III English Semantics and Lexicography.
9 Dictionaries Today: What Can We Do With Them? (Reinhard R. K. Hartmann).
10 English Onomasiological Dictionaries and Thesauri (Werner Hüllen).
11 Johnson, Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary (Charlotte Brewer).
Part IV Pre-history of English.
12 English as an Indo-European Language (Philip Baldi).
13 English as a Germanic Language (R. D. Fulk).
Part V English in History: England and America.
Section 1 Old English in History (ca. 450-1066).
14 Early Old English (up to 899) (Daniel Donoghue).
15 Late Old English (899-1066) (Mechthild Gretsch).
16 Topics in Old English Dialects (Lucia Kornexl).
Section 2 Middle English in History (1066-1485).
17 Early Middle English (1066-ca. 1350) (Thorlac Turville-Petre).
18 Late Middle English (ca. 1350-1485) (Seth Lerer).
19 Varieties of Middle English (Jeremy J. Smith).
Section 3 Early Modern English in History (1485-1660).
20 Early Modern English (1485-1660) (Terttu Nevalainen).
21 Varieties of Early Modern English (Jonathan Hope).
Section 4 Modern British English in History (1660-present).
22 British English in the Long Eighteenth Century (1660-1830) (Carey McIntosh).
23 British English Since 1830 (Richard W. Bailey).
24 The Rise of Received Pronunciation (Lynda Mugglestone).
Section 5 American English in History.
25 American English to 1865 (David Simpson).
26 American English Since 1865 (Walt Wolfram).
27 American English Dialects (Gavin Jones).
Section 6 Topics in History.
28 Early Modern English Print Culture (John N. King).
29 Issues of Gender in Modern English (Deborah Cameron).
30 Class, Ethnicity, and the Formation of "Standard English" (Tony Crowley).
31 The Transplantation of American English in Philippine Soil (Br. Andrew Gonzalez, FSC).
32 English, Latin, and the Teaching of Rhetoric (Michael Matto).
33 English in Mass Communications: News Discourse and the Language of Journalism (Philippa K. Smith and Allan Bell).
Part VI English in History: English Outside England and the United States.
Section 1 British Isles and Ireland.
34 English in Wales (Marion Löffler).
35 English in Scotland (J. Derrick McClure).
36 English in Ireland (Terence Patrick Dolan).
Section 2 English in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
37 English in Canada (John Edwards).
38 Australian and New Zealand English (Pam Peters).
Section 3 Colonial and Post-colonial English.
39 South Asian English (Kamal K. Sridhar).
40 English in the Caribbean (Donald Winford).
41 English in Africa (Alamin M. Mazrui).
Part VII Literary Languages.
42 The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Tradition (Fred C. Robinson).
43 "In swich englissh as he kan": Chaucer's Literary Language (John F. Plummer).
44 Shakespeare's Literary Language (Adam N. McKeown).
45 Jane Austen's Literary English (Mary Poovey).
46 Joyce's English (Laurent Milesi).
47 Faulkner's Language (Noel Polk).
48 Twixt the Twain: East-West in Rushdie's Zubaan-Tongue (Tabish Khair).
49 Toni Morrison: The Struggle for the Word (Justine Tally).
Part VIII Issues in Present-Day English.
50 Migration and Motivation in the Development of African American Vernacular English (Mary B. Zeigler).
51 Latino Varieties of English (Robert Bayley).
52 Teaching English to Native Speakers: The Subject Matter of Composition (1970-2005) (Mary Soliday).
53 Earning as well as Learning a Language: English and the Post-colonial Teacher (Eugene Chen Eoyang).
54 Creoles and Pidgins (Salikoko S. Mufwene).
55 World Englishes in World Contexts (Braj B. Kachru).
Part IX Further Approaches to Language Study.
56 Style and Stylistics (David L. Hoover).
57 Corpus-Based Linguistic Approaches to the History of English (Anne Curzan).
58 Sociolinguistics (Robin Tolmach Lakoff).
59 Cognitive Linguistics (Dirk Geeraerts).
Glossary of Linguistic Terms (Haruko Momma).
Index.
Michael Matto is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Adelphi University. He has published articles on Old English language, literature, and culture, and is currently editing (with Greg Delanty) a collection of new literary translations of Old English poems (2009).
