154 Early Modern English
linguistic and literary. The style of writing became less elaborate. Francis Bacon
introduced the essay form. The King James Version of the Bible, which we have
already discussed in its sociopolitical context, must also be mentioned here as a
mark of high literary achievement.
Jacobean poetry is best represented by the works of Ben Jonson and John
Donne, the latter being the most important of the metaphysical poets. The
sombreness of such works is echoed in the melancholy of Jacobean drama, and
scathing satire abounds even in the comic plays such as Ben Jonson's Volpone or
John Marston's The Malcontent. Tragedy is represented by such plays as Webster's
The Duchess of Malfi, Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and The Changeling, by
Middleton and Rowley. It is argued that Shakespeare produced his finest work in
the Jacobean period, his tragedies and romances.
Since we have divided up the Early Modern period in such a way that it spans
300 years, we cannot do justice to the literary history of the entire period. Per­
haps we need to mention that the Early Modern period ends in the eighteenth
century with the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, which is
inextricably linked with such cataclysmic events as the French and American
Revolutions. The turn of century into the nineteenth sees the return of the romance,
typified by the poetry of John Keats and Percy Shelley, and the Gothic novels of
Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto) and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), which
takes us into the Modern era.
5 Sociolinguistic Focus
Although the introduction of a standard is, in terms of the accessibility of the
written word, a generally welcome development, it nevertheless has great draw­
backs. One clear drawback is that it privileges those that can use it, and leaves
those who cannot at a disadvantage. In other words, the standard develops a
'gate-keeping' function on the social level, barring those who fail to meet the
standard from advancement of various sorts.
The existence of a written standard also obscures the fact that there are other
varieties of English competing with it, which are used in various functions every
day, but which are not the vehicle of print communication. It goes without
saying that there were regional and social varieties of Early Modern English, but
their underrepresentation in the written record makes it difficult to talk about
them with great certainty.
Early Modern English 155
In a recent work, Barber (1997) illustrates how EME varies across a number of
dimensions, including time, social group (class), religious group (e.g., Puritan
English), occupation (merchant, rogue, vagabond), social context of speech (e.g.,
whether formal or informal, according to the speakers' relationship to one another),
and whether a text is spoken, written, or written text intended for oral delivery.
Most of the time written work of the period is produced in the (near) standard,
which is natural, but occasionally writers of poetry and literature provide an
(albeit impressionistic) glimpse of regional dialect for literary effect. Among the
classic examples cited by Barber are Edmund Spenser's reproduction of northern
speech in The Shepheardes Calendar from 1579, and Edgar's generally 'rustic'
speech in King Lear, when he wishes to disguise himself in order to help his
father.
The attitudes of commentators towards particular types of language in the
EME period varied, as with Richard Verstegan's 1605 A Restitution of Decayed
Intelligence, in which regional variation is discussed:
We see that in some seueral partes of England it self, both the names of things, and
pronountiations of words are somewhat different and of this different pronountiation
one example in steed of many shal suffise, as this: for pronouncing according as one
would say at London, I would eat more cheese yf I had it! the northern man saith, Ay
sud eat mare cheese gin aye hadet/ and the westerne man saith: Chud eat more cheese
an chad it. Lo heer three different pronountiations in our own countrey in one thing
and heerof many the lyke examples might be alleged.
(Barber, 1997: 12)
While many commentators before have cited George Puttenham's (1589) The
Arte of English Poesie in order to demonstrate that there was an emerging
regional standard in England at the time, Barber points out that Puttenham
makes social commentary also. 'The poet must use the language of the educated
classes, not of artisans. And he must use the present-day language, not that of
Chaucer and other older poets.' He continues:
neither shall he take the termes of Northern-men, such as the vse in dayly talke, whether
they be noble men or gentlemen, or of their best clarkes all is a matter: nor in effect any
speech vsed beyond the riuer of Trent, though no man can deny but that theirs is the
purer English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our Southerne
English is, no more is the far Westerne mans speech: ye shall therefore take the vsuall
speech of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within
Ix. myles, and not much aboue. I say not this but that in every shyre of England there
be gentlemen and others that speake but specially write as good Southerne as we of
Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the common people of euery shire, to whom the
gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes for the most part condescend.
(Barber, 1997: 13)
156 Early Modern English
Apart from giving evidence of regional speech, Puttenham also shows that
regional varieties can be spoken by people of all social classes (even 'gentlemen',
scholars and noblemen). We know that even up to the time of Gladstone promin­
ent British gentlemen were known to speak with regional accents, though they
might be fully competent in the written standard. (Indeed, we might argue that
the Labour government of the 1990s has reinforced regional English in parlia­
mentary debate.) Barber suggests (p. 13) that the word condescend at the end of
the passage from Puttenham might imply that gentlemen would speak Standard
English amongst themselves, but shift to the regional varieties when talking with
their inferiors. While this could indeed be the case, the evidence appears more
strongly in favour of bidialectalism: Standard English in formal written and re­
gional English in spoken and written informal communication.
5.4.2 Standardization
During the Early Modern English period there were a number of significant
changes in society that influenced the direction of linguistic development. Baugh
and Cable (1993) single out four for special discussion: the introduction of
the printing press, access to education, increased communication, and social
stratification.
5.4.2.1 The Printing Press
Caxton introduced the printing press to Britain in 1476. By 1500 over 35,000
books had been printed, though most were in Latin. However, by 1640 there
were approximately 20,000 titles available in English. This clearly had an impact
on both literacy and the uniformity of the language, most directly on the stand­
ardization of spelling, and perhaps indirectly on the differences among dialects.
By Shakespeare's time up to half the population of London was literate. And
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the rise of the middle class brought
with it an increase in leisure time for reading and a general interest in education
and learning. Books became both cheap and accessible.
5.4.2.2 The Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation
As we said in section 5.2.6, Early Modern English was the period of the Renais­
sance, when the value of classical Greek and Latin texts was re-established and
influenced the languages of Europe. By the middle of the fifteenth century the
modern languages of Europe were being advocated as a medium of learning, and
it eventually became acceptable to use the vernacular, both in and out of the
academy.
Early Modern English 157
The Protestant Reformation helped spur on the acceptance of English in religious
contexts, since one of its fundamental beliefs was that the vernacular, not Latin,
should be the language of the church.
5.4.2.3 English Established
From the sixteenth century onwards, English flourished again, though, like the
other vernacular European languages of the period, it took time for it to establish
itself as a recognized medium in fields where Latin had been the dominant force
before. For a long time, the vernacular languages had been considered inferior to
Latin and not equal to expressing abstract and complex thoughts. Moreover, like
the other European languages, English needed to establish a regular and uniform
orthographical system, and to expand its vocabulary to meet the increased
demands caused by the demise of Latin and by developments in science and new
discoveries throughout the burgeoning Empire. During the sixteenth century a
large number of classical works were translated into English, so that they were
available to the monolingual middle classes and non-academics in general. William
Wyclif's campaign against the Latin of the church during the Protestant Reforma­
tion did much to assist the establishment of English as the accepted form of
communication in all fields. Moreover, given the more widespread use of the
printing press, it rapidly became obvious that English-language books sold better,
so that market forces (a modern term applicable to this period) did much to
strengthen the position of the vernacular language.
Orthography
The advent of the printing press accelerated the process of standardization, as,
once the language was set down in print, its conventions became fixed. Indeed,
it is arguable that, because the sound system of the language has developed quite
dramatically since Chaucer's time, while the spelling rules that were subsequently
devised have remained relatively static, the printing press is in part directly respons­
ible for the lack of correspondence between sound and symbol in the English
writing system.
The word orthography means 'right writing'. Since there was no accepted
system of spelling in the Middle Ages, writers used to spell words as closely as
they could to the way they pronounced them. By the middle of the sixteenth
century, a modicum of standardization was present in the language, and books
on spelling and usage became common. Chomsky and Halle (1968), for example,
make frequent reference to John Hart's commentary, which was written in 1570.
And Richard Mulcaster (1582) provides a list of 7,000 of the most common
words in English, advocating consistency in spelling, and influencing later scholars
such as Dr Johnson, whose own dictionary is a good illustration of the standards
existing in the middle of the eighteenth century. From his time onward, the
158 Early Modern English Early Modern English 159

spelling of English words has changed very little, so that it is hardly a problem
for modern readers to read Early Modern English texts.
5.4.3 The Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift radically altered most of the English long vowel system,
and although spelling had been pretty much fixed by Johnson's time, more recent
phases of the Great Vowel Shift have rendered the spelling system of English less
phonetic in character. This change is one of the many reasons why the Great
The Great Vowel Shift began in about the fifteenth century and was largely
completed by the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. One interpretation
of this shift has it that in the first stage the phoneme /i:/ as in wine and tide
developed a series of 'slurred' pronunciations with the preceding on-glide [1i] and
[;ii]. Similar on-glides developed for the long close back vowel [u:]: [uu] and [;iu].
During the second stage the mid-close vowels /e:/ and /o:/ raised to /i:/ and /u:/,
and [1i] and [;m] became phonemes. Middle English /d and h:/ raised to /e:/ and
/o:/, and /a:/ was raised to /e:/:

C__
Vowel Shift should be looked at in detail at this point.
The Great Vowel Shift can be studied purely from the structural point of
view, that is, without recourse to social issues. In the following treatment of this _)
C_
/ [o:]
important set of changes in the English language, however, the purely linguistic �
or phonological discussion inevitably leads on to the sociolinguistic, as our dis­

C
cussion will show. [e:] [J:] ____,/

5.4.3.1 Phonological Change [a:]

(Compare this diagram with Aitchrson, 1991: 153.)
From the point of view of the structure of English alone it is very interesting to
view the radical changes in the long vowels since Chaucer's time, most of which This system-wide set of related shifts is known as a chain shift (the First and
changed dramatically in the late Middle and Early Modern English period and Second Germanic Consonant Shifts discussed in chapter 2 are further examples
some of which are still changing in the present day. of chain shifts in English, though these are in the consonant system). Each non­
As we saw in the previous chapter there was little change in the quality of high vowel rises one height, and the high vowels, which are unable to rise any
vowels from Old to Middle English in accented syllables. The most important further, become diphthongs. The 'chain' aspect is the systematic interconnection:
change in the long vowels was from a to o -for example, ba:n > bxn (bone), ba:t it does not imply that one change preceded another directly (in time), but that
> b:JJt (boat). The long a? in Old English spelling represented two sounds: in there is a system-wide coordinated movement in which each chain triggers or
certain words it stood for /a:/ in West Germanic. It represents a close /e:/ outside implies another.
the West Saxon area and remains /e:/ in ME (North-West Saxon ded > ded; In the usual terminology (coined by Andre Martinet) there is a mixture here of
slepan > slepen). In many words OE Ix/ resulted from the i-umlaut of /a/. This a push chain and a drag chain. This all began with the raising of the mid vowels
was a more open vowel and appears as /e:/ in Middle English (OE cla?ne > clene; /e:/, lo:!, which had two effects: it 'pushed' up the high vowels /i:/, /u:/ and left a
da?lan > delen). The two sounds have now become identical: deed, clean). space, which dragged up the lower vowels /r,:/ and h:/ to fill the empty /e:/, /o:/
Other long vowels of OE preserved their original quality in ME (med > mede; positions. And when /e:/ raised to /e:/, this left the slot open for /a:/ to move into.
win > wine; boc > bok; hus > hus). OE diphthongs were all simplified and all Everything except the raising of /a:/ was complete by the mid-sixteenth century.
ME diphthongs are new formations, resulting chiefly from the combination of a The developments can be charted as follows:
simple vowel with a following /j/ or /w/, which vocalized.
In most instances, while the quality of vowels did not change, their quantity, ME 1550 1600
or length, did. OE long vowels were shortened late in the OE period or early in bite 1: e1 a1
ME, when followed by a double consonant or by most combinations of consonants beet e: 1: i:
(OE great> gretter; OE axian > asken; OE bacan > baken; OE etan > eten). beat e: e: e:
While they are not particularly noticeable changes in themselves, they nevertheless mate a: a: e:
determined the subsequent development of the English vowel system. out u: OU au
 160 Early Modern English
boot o: u u:
boat ::,: o: o:
Later developments brought the vowels more in line with PDE. Thus, lail
monophthongized to la:I, so weight and mate fell together as lc:I, then le:I.
Before this le:I in beat raised to li:I so that beat and beet fell together. These
developments began in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century and were
not completed until the eighteenth century.
While these structuralist and functionalist descriptions (Lass, 1987) are inter­
esting in themselves, in that they tell us how the changes proceeded through the
linguistic system, they do not enlighten us as to why the change might have
begun, that is, why the vowels began to shift in the first place, and how they
spread to be gradually adopted by more and more people.
Such a discussion necessitates a brief consideration of the study of linguistic
variation, which is involved in the correlation of linguistic variables (such as the
choice amongst a number of variants of the same vowel) and social factors (such
as the age, gender and social class of the speaker). If we look at correlations
between linguistic and social features, and assume that they are not constant, but
shifting, we may be able to pinpoint the source and mechanism of spread of
an innovation throughout the members of a speech community. There are two
important issues to bear in mind here, which (after Labov, 1972) sociolinguists
refer to as the actuation problem (How does a language change start?), and the
implementation problem (How does a language change spread?).
There is evidence in the dialects around London in the early sixteenth century
that the vowels in the words mate and meet merged, so that these two words
became homophones. In the seventeenth century, however, it is documented that,
instead of the merger of mate and meet, the vowels in meat and meet merged and
the word mate was distinct. If it were the case that the second option replaced the
first, then a situation would have existed in EME where a vowel merger was
being reversed. This is a theoretical impossibility, and so another explanation has
to be found.
It would appear that, rather than replacing the mate/meet merger, the merger
of meat and meet actually occurred alongside it. In other words, two separate
systems were operating at the same time. We have here a classic case of variation:
there are two alternating realizations of English sounds, or linguistic variables,
and we need to consider on what principle they were distributed. Where they
apparently differed was in their social distribution: that is, there seems to be a
correlation here between linguistic choice and social class. Evidence from sources
such as Shakespeare's plays suggests that in the dialects around London, espe­
cially Kent and East Anglia, there was a tendency in the lower classes to substi­
tute higher, long mid-close vowels in words where long mid-open vowels would
be expected in London Middle English, i.e., le:I and lo:I instead of le:! and /::,:I
Early Modern English 161
(Dobson, 1968: 608-18, 674-8). In other words, the lower classes were merging
,neat and meet. Since these lower-class dialects surrounding the capital were
stigmatized, speakers with social aspirations opted to distance themselves from
them by means of their speech. They did not manipulate their language con­
sciously, however: we would argue that their sensitivity to this marker was below
the level of consciousness - what sociolinguists would call 'change from below'.
People whose social status was not in question maintained the distinction between
ME le:I and lc:I words. This seems to have caused the social climbers to adopt
even higher vowels in Middle English le:I words in order to maintain their social
difference from the lower class (Samuels, 1972: 41-2). Eventually, a redistribution
of words with long vowels would take place in the system and the shift would
have begun. Subsequently, Middle English la:I would move to le:I, through a
drag chain mechanism. Later sound changes have obscured the distinction, but it
is still marked in our spelling system. Words pronounced in London with the
Middle English le:I are generally spelled with ee while London Middle English
/c:I words are often spelled with ea. The system that the lower class had first
adopted eventually developed into the preferred, prestige system, while the system
that originally carried prestige became stigmatized. (This in itself is proof that no
linguistic token is inherently prestigious or stigmatized, but rather becomes so by
convention, which may change over time.)
Thus we can see that the Great Vowel Shift is indeed a mixture of push and
pull or drag factors, as described in the discussion of the structural aspects of the
changes above. However, we also are able to hypothesize that the change is
motivated by social stratification. That is to say, it was caused by the increase in
social differentiation typical of the swelling urban population in and around the
capital at the time (compare the discussion in Leith, 1983 ).
It is important to note that the entire chain shift was not caused by these social
factors, however. Further internal changes in the English vowel system as a whole
resulted from the vowel shift, and can be seen as a structural adjustment of the
system as a result of the initial changes. Phonologists point out that the Great
Vowel Shift produced a very unbalanced system of three front vowels, two back
vowels and no low vowel. The system readjusted to compensate for this uneven
distribution. Short lal was lengthened in a few words like father, providing a new
source of la:I. Certain dialects developed /-deletion in words such as almond and
palm, the accompanying lengthening also producing long la:I. In other dialects
of English, such as in the United States and Canada, short hi in words like not,
hot and got was also lowered and unrounded, and eventually lengthened to
produce more instances of la:I. The consonant /rl was lost except prevocalically
in parts of England, Wales, the eastern and southern United States, Australia and
other parts of the world, causing compensatory lengthening of the preceding
vowel, and thereby providing another source of long la:I in words like park and
garden.