The Standardisation of English
This history of the standardisation of English can be thought of in terms of a first, abortive, stage; a lull; and finally a fuller stage whose effects are still with us.
The abortive stage
Remember that standardisation makes sense
only in the context of a more established society where there is rule and
order. The early centuries of the settlement of the Germanics in
After years of continuous war, Alfred (or Ælfred) king of
Manuscripts were written, and it is no
surprise that the majority of them employed the
The lull
This development of the standard was stopped rather suddenly with the Norman Conquest when the languages used for more formal settings changed from English to either French or Latin. English was regarded as the language of the menials – hardly ever written, and spoken with a great deal of variation in different parts of the country – and in such a situation, it is not surprising that the notion of Standard English was an irrelevant notion. (Remember that the notion of a standard is closely tied to the written, rather than spoken, language.)
A fresh start
When French (and eventually Latin as well) receded, it was time to pick up the pieces for English.
The social, political and economic systems were also underwent a great sea change.
- Economy: there was a shift from a static, self-sufficient feudal economy to a more competitive economy through commerce and industry and notions of profit and the like.
- Religion: the Mediaeval Period was
characterised by a very strong notion of Christendom, with the European
nations united by allegiance to the Pope in
- Society: social mobility gave rise to the middle class; and the sense of a divinely-ordained social order based on birth was on its way out.
- Politics: this period saw the
emergence of nation states and nationalism; the political centre was now
- Education: there was an emerging
schooling system; and the old universities
- Psyche: notions of the individual (as opposed to the collective whole) begin to be emphasised more; the rise of the rationalist modes of thought (which questioned notions, and asked for evidence for claims) took over from the old scholastic modes of thought (based on faith).
Selection
Variation in spelling, grammar and pronunciation – which was previously accepted as a fact of life – began to be seen as a problem to be solved.
Al the longage of the Northumres and speicialliche at
Oure language is also so dyuerse in it selfe that the commen maner of spekynge in Englysshe of some contre can skante [= scarcely] be vnderstondid in som other contre of the same lond (Lydgate, 1530)
And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre [far] from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne. For we Englyssche men ben [are] borne vunder the domynacyon of the mone [moon], which is neuer stedfaste but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season and waneth & dyscreseath another season. And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in tamyse [Thames] for to haue sayled ouer the see into zelande [in Holland], and for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte forlond [foreland – ie in Kent], and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam into an hows and axed [asked] for mete [= food], and specyally he axyd after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wold haue hadde egges, and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at last a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vunderstod hym wel. Loo what sholde a man in thyse days now wryte, egges or eyren? Certaynly, it is harde to playse [please] eurey man by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of langage. For in these dayes euery man that is in ony reputacyon in his countre wyll vtter his commynycacyon and matters in such maners & terms that fewe men shall vunderstonde theym. And som honest and grete clerkes haue been wyth me and desired me to wryte the most curyous termes that I coude fynde. And thus betwene playne, rude & curyous I stande abasshed. But in my iudgements the comyn terms that be dayli vused ben lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent englysshe. (Caxton (the printer), 1490 – also note: to be accused of being French or even speaking French was not a pleasant thing to say at the time: France remained the ‘enemy’ for a long time! Eyren is the original English form; egg came from Norse.)
The variety that became the basis of the Standard was the one spoken
by the merchant class in London – this was the East Midland dialect (see
map on the right). We must remember that this is not the dialect spoken
by the lower class – they spoke a south-eastern dialect which eventually gave
rise to Cockney (the street talk of London today). We must also remember that
Standard English isn’t pure East Midland – there was, to a certain
point, influences from the other dialects. Indeed, some suggest that Standard
English is partly a result of dialect levelling. (The term is frequently
also applied to American English and Australian English. What is meant is that
there were mixed groups with different dialects and accents, and that out of
this variation there eventually came a fairly uniform variety that had features
of these various groups.) As Puttenham, in his Art
of English poesie [1589] put it, the model for
correct English was ‘the usuall speach
of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx.
[= 40] myles, and not much above’.
Why then did this get selected?
- The Chancery Hand. In the 15th century, the City of Westminster (two miles (3 km) away from London) was the centre of government administration. The Chancery was the Court of the Lord Chancellor, and the produced many documents written in English (rather than French).
- Printing. This period marked the beginning of the printing press, and the influence of the selected variety was accelerated by the copies of texts that were new made available more easily and at a lower cost.
- The London-Oxford-Cambridge Triangle. Oxford and Cambridge were only about 60 miles (100 km) from London. Students from all over England mixed in the two universities. London, as the capital, also had a mixed population. In the very influential triangle, much East Midland speech would be heard, and this could have been used as a kind of lingua franca among a mobile group. The fact that the group is mobile meant that they would take the variety to different parts of the country as well. It is also important to remember that the triangle represents the centres not only of learning and government, but also of the arts (Shakespeare, example, had to move to London to escape the label of being provincial) and commerce.
- A Mixed Dialect. The fact that the East Midland speech was a mixed dialect might have qualified it to a greater degree for selection.
- A Happy Mean. The fact that it was spoken in a geographically central location (rather than in the extreme north or south) might also mean that more people would be familiar with it.
Acceptance
By the middle of the 15th century, the East Midland dialect became accepted as the written norm for official documents, regardless of the native dialect of the scribe. This wasn’t the case earlier, for example, in the time of Chaucer. It is true that he wrote in the East Midland dialect as it was spoken in London; but when his manuscript was copied by different scribes in different parts of the country, the dialect was silently altered – there was no sense of a literary norm.
However, by the time of Shakespeare in the 16th century, non-standard use was already associated with simplicity or buffoonery. Characters speaking a non-standard variety would not be taken seriously. For example, in King Lear, the high-born Edgar disguises himself as a ‘base peasant’ and affects Kentish speech:
OSWALD: Let go, slave, or thou diest!
EDGAR: Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk pass. An chud ha’ bin zwaggered out of my life,
’twould not ha’ bin zo long
as ’tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th’ old man; keep out, che vor
ye, or ise try whether your costard
[head] or my ballow [cudgel] be the
harder: ch’ill be plain with you.
OSWALD: Out, dunghill!
EDGAR: Ch’ill pick your teeth, zir: come; no matter vor your foins [a thrust in fencing]. (Lear IV, vi)
Edgar uses <v> for <f> (volk for folk, vortnight for fortnight) and vice versa (vor for for); <z> for <s> (zo for so; zir for sir, zwaggered for swaggered) ; chud for I would (remember that ‘I’ comes from OE ic, and in ME, this was i or ic or ich) and so on. (You might also note that Oswald uses thou to Edgar, and Edgar uses you to Oswald.)
This new standard seems to have been first accepted by government functionaries, then groups of literati, so that by the end of the 16th century, this was now the accepted printed standard (Leith 1998: 44). As mentioned earlier, the beginning of printing and the publication the AV Bible of 1611 meant that this standard was spread more easily. We need to remember though that at no time was this standard universal in the UK, then or today, and widespread variation still exists. Where it was most influential was with those in realms of power.
What the new metropolitan variety had to cope with was with domains (= situations of use) previously associated previously associated with Latin and French – and this included law, government, literature, religion, scholarship and education (Leith 1998: 44). The goal of standardisation has always been: maximal variation in function, minimal variation in form. In other words, the standard should be the variety that can be used in the maximum number of domains (all, if possible) and that variation (in vocabulary, spelling, grammar, etc. – but perhaps we should exclude phonology because the standard is largely to do with the written variety) should be kept minimal.
Government and Law
Although English was used in government and law again in 1362, it wasn’t until 1731 that an Act was passed to limit the use of French and Latin. Given the history of French and Latin in these domains, it would not be surprising to find that legal English is, to some extent, Frenchified and Latinate. We still talk of the Attorney General (with the adjective coming after the noun as in French – and of course attorney is derived from Old French atorné, aturné or atourné); thus a writ requiring a body to be brought in court is a habeas corpus, Latin for ‘thou [shalt] have a body [ie in court]’.
Literature
The literati were still very familiar with
the great classics of Rome and Greece – written in Latin and Greek – such as
Virgil’s Æneid, Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad;
other notable names include Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Cicero, Euripides, Plato,
Plutarch and Sophocles. In many European and North American universities, it is
still possible to take a degree in the Classics where these authors would hold
important positions in the curriculum. If we therefore imagine how everyone
that is educated in the 16th and 17th centuries would know at least some of the
Latin and Greek classics, we could well appreciate their dissatisfaction with
the English language as a literary vehicle. English was described as ‘coarse
bread’, ‘homespun cloth’, ‘rough’, ‘rude’, ‘simple’ and the like. English
lacked the eloquence associated with the classical languages.
The classically trained – the classicists
– were in favour of injecting more Latin loan-words and structures into
English. However, those who were not so adept in the classical languages were
generally more in favour of an English that was kept pure, without so many
loan-words or borrowed structures – these were the purists. It must also
be remembered that women at that time were also not trained in the classics.
The classicists introduced many style manuals to guide writers of English, and
introduced new words. Look at these words used by Crispinus
in Ben Johnson’s Poetaster:
This resulted in the core and non-core distinction in English. Angelo in Measure for Measure is described as ‘A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time / And razure of oblivion’ (Act 5, sc. 1). Notice Shakespeare now mixes the Anglo-Saxon elements with the Latin elements: ‘tooth of time’ is wholly Anglo-Saxon, and ‘razure of oblivion’ is latinate. Angelo is eventually found to be corrupt, and Mariana pleads for his life, and when she speaks from her heart, interestingly, every item is from the Anglo-Saxon: ‘O my dear lord, / I crave no other, nor no better man’ (Act 5, sc. 1).
Religion
Unlike in literary writing or in scholarship, it was not possible to isolate the language of the Bible from the ordinary people. At the same time, there had to be an air of dignity to the language there. Interestingly, therefore, when it came to the language that was to be used for the English translations of the Bible, the dignity and distancing was achieved not by French or Latin models, but by archaism. The AV of 1611 employed language that reflected usage a couple of generations earlier. Long borrowed words are avoided and clauses are joined paratactically, on the whole. Look at the beginning of John’s gospel in the AV: ‘In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God and the Word was God’ (compare this with the New English Bible: ‘When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God …’).
Codification
Codification involves the defining and prescription of the form of the language to be used with the aim to minimise variation. This is usually undertaken by a small group of scholars. In the face of variation, they need to decide which are to be seen as ‘correct’ and which are to be seen as ‘wrong’. They looked back to Latin and also to the model of France and Italy which had set up Academies which made pronouncements about the language. The English never succeeded in setting up an Academy though, so that the codification of English has been a less centralised affair than in France. So, recommended usage did not lie in the hands of committees, but of particular books by scholars or the literati.
The production of these guides and grammars were also party motivated by a concern about the flux of language. Here is Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels) on the matter:
How then shall any man, who hath a genius for history
equal to the best of the ancients, be able to undertake such a work with spirit
and cheerfulness, when he considers that he will be read with pleasure but a
very few years, and in an age or two shall hardly be understood without an
interpreter? The fame of our writers is usually confined to these two islands
[Britain and Ireland], and it is hard it should be limited in time as
much as place by the perpetual variations of our speech. (British
Education, 1756, p. xvii)
The answer seemed to be to try to ‘fix’ the language – ‘if it [English] were once refined to a certain standard, perhaps there might be ways found out to fix it for ever, or at least till we are invaded and made a conquest by some other state’. He adds, ‘I see no absolute necessity why any language should be perpetually changing; for we find many examples to the contrary’ (Swift, Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712 – note that ‘ascertain’ here means ‘to establish a standard’).
An important document
of codification is Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755). Previous to Dr
Johnson, the dictionaries were ‘hard word’ dictionaries or bilingual
dictionaries – and did not set out to record ‘ordinary’ English words.
Accomplished by one man, his work was a feat of scholarship – although some of
the definitions given by him might be a little quirky. Look at his definition
of patron:
PA'TRON. n.s. [patron,
Fr. Patronus, Latin.]
1. One who countenances, supports
or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with indolence, and is paid with
flattery.
I’ll plead for you, as for my patron.
Shakesp.
Ne’er let me pass in silence
Dorset’s name;
Ne’er cease to mention the continu'd debt,
Which the great patron
only would forget. Prior.
We might understand this definition if we knew that his publisher advanced him enough to get started, but nothing more. When he asked Lord Chesterfield to be his patron, the man offered a token £10, so Johnson had to finance the work himself.
Many grammars were also written, and those by Bishop Lowth were well known. The aim was clearly to lay down the law and be highly prescriptive. Here is the aim, in Lowth’s own words:
The principal design of a Grammar of any Language
is to teach us to express ourselves with propriety in that Language; and to
enable us to judge of every phrase and form of construction, whether it be
right or not. The plain way of doing this is, to lay down rules, and to
illustrate them by examples. But, beside shewing what
is right, the matter may be further explained by pointing out what is wrong.
(Robert Lowth, Short Introduction to English
Grammar, 1762)
Many ridiculously tried to constrain English into Latin grammar. Therefore, pronouncements about the ‘incorrectness’ of English constructions like It’s me, which had been around for centuries were made – because the Latin construction required the final pronoun in the subject form. The were also influenced by algebraic logic, so that double negatives (which had been available in Old English onwards) were deemed ‘incorrect’ (or, in Lowth’s words: ‘Two Negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an Affirmative’).
Here is another example of ‘what is wrong’ by Lowth:
It has been very rightly observed, that the Verb had,
in the common phrase, I had rather, is not properly used, wither as an
Active or as an Auxiliary Verb; that, being in the Past time, it cannot in this
case be properly expressive of time Present; and that it is by no means
reducible to any Grammatical construction. In truth, it seems to have arisen
from a mere mistake, in resolving the familiar and ambiguous abbreviation, I’d
rather, into I had rather, instead of I would rather; which
latter is the regular, analogous, and proper expression.
B.
Processes of standardisation
D. The development of academic writing