Historical Research on Spoken Language: Corpus Perspectives uses historical sources to discuss continuity and change in spoken language. Based on two corpora compiled using data from sociological and anthropological studies of Victorian London and 1930s Bolton, the author shows how historical spoken corpora can illuminate the nature of spoken language as well as the attitudes, values and behaviour of the specific community represented in a corpus. This book:
- demonstrates how spoken language can be examined using material collected before the advent of sophisticated recording equipment and large-scale computerised corpora;
- shows how other written sources such as diaries, letters and existing historical corpora can be used to analyse informal language use as far back as the fifteenth century;
- provides insight into the longevity and resilience of many spoken language features which are often regarded as vernacular or non-standard;
- comes with a companion website which gives full access to the Bolton Worktown Corpus.
Historical Research on Spoken Language is key reading for researchers and students working in relevant areas.
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
