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The present course is intended to take a fresh look at the developments in the English language - both in Britain and overseas - during the past three centuries, so roughly from 1700 to the present-day. During this period certain key issues came to the fore: 1) the rise of a fixed standard in Britain and, with this, prescriptive attitudes towards those who do not speak this standard, 2) the spread of English overseas with the rise of national varieties outside of Britain, 3) the increasing separation of British and American English, 4) the use of the English language as a lingua franca by non-native speakers. These and other matters will be treated in detail in this course. Special emphasis will be laid on the way in which linguists can track recent change in the language and the tools they use to do this. N.B.: This course can function as a reading course for those who require it. In this case the students must take a closer look at texts from the late modern period. Recommended reading Bailey, Richard W. 1996. Nineteenth Century English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Barber, Charles 1997. Early Modern English. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: University Press.
Beal, Joan C. 2004. English in Modern Times 1700-1945. London: Edward Arnold.
Görlach, Manfred 1999. English in the Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge: University Press.
Jones, Charles 2004. An Introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: University Press.
Kytö, Merja et al. (eds) 2006. Nineteenth Century English. Cambridge: University Press.
Nevalainen, Terttu 2004. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: University Press.
Romaine, Suzanne 1998. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume IV 1776-1997. Cambridge: University Press. |
