7 - Standardisation and the language of early statutes

Summary

Introduction

The rise of standard language is closely connected with increasing literacy and the wide distribution of written texts representing various genres with various functions. In the present paper I shall discuss the influence of a highly specific genre, statutory texts, on the early development of the written English standard in Late Middle and Early Modern English. My survey begins with the reintroduction of English in the fifteenth century; unfortunately space does not permit a discussion of the role played by Old English legal texts in the developing standards before the Norman Conquest.

Discussion of the rise of the standard has so far mainly concentrated on the gradual fixation of English orthography and the loss of variant spellings. This is quite natural as spelling variants, at least to a certain extent, give information on dialectal pronunciations. Furthermore, the monumental Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English has given great impetus to the systematic study of spelling in fifteenth-century English.

It is obvious, however, that the time has come to shift the focus of interest from spelling variants to other linguistic features. As Laura Wright points out in her insightful article about the evolution of Standard English:

Most of all, we cannot claim to have identified and understood a process of standardisation until we have treated not only spelling, but also morphology, vocabulary, phonology, and syntax. The evolution of the written sentence is one of the most central developments of standardisation, along with the process of making external contexts explicit. Until we have understood the development of such constituents, the story of the evolution of Standard English remains to be told.

(1996: 113)