Chapter 1 Introduction – In search of spoken language in the past
Chapter 2 The Bolton/Worktown Corpus (BWC) and the Mayhew Corpus (MC)
Chapter 3 Windows on Society: pronouns and vague category markers
Chapter 4 Evaluation, Affect and Intensity
Chapter 5: Dialect and identity
Chapter 6 Sources and resources for historical spoken language research: beyond the MC and the BWC
Chapter 7 Vernacular grammar: longevity and obsolescence
Chapter 8 Vernacular continuity
Chapter 9 Reflections
Biography
Ivor Timmis is Reader in English Language Teaching at Leeds Beckett University, UK
"This most important book introduces and describes in detail a computerized corpus of English texts representing twentieth-century working-class speech. It is also of great value as an introduction to the ways in which spoken English of earlier centuries can be approached and analyzed, and how the comparison between written and spoken language can help us to understand the long history of English."
Matti Rissanen, University of Helsinki, Finland
"[…] the author's enthusiasm for his material is infectious […] this is a highly readable, pioneering voyage into the spoken vernacular of the period 1852 to 1940, a demonstration of what is methodically possible, and a celebration of uniquely rich collections of language material."
Jonathan Culpeper, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 2018; 4(2): 281–284
"[This book] is well-written, well-organized, and the observations and analyses are presented with clarity and conciseness."
Ulrike Krischke, Anglia 2019; 137(2): 351–356
