Summary
Richard Bailey's discussion of English's interactions with other languages between the Renaissance and the modern period is another example of a penetrating essay that coolly distils a vast amount of information, while Mugglestone contributes a fine chapter on the fertility of Victorian English compensating for what has to date been very limited treatment of this period. Both these histories, and the Oxford one especially, include forays into diaries and unpublished correspondence - such as letters written by the Clifts, a working-class Cornish family at the end of the i8th century - to supplement impressions of the linguistic status quo available in printed texts.
See the full content of this document
Extract
A Wicked Way with Words
Histories of our language used to focus on "standard English". Now, writes Henry Htichings, they are as likely to draw on rap and advertising as on Keats and Milton A wicked way with words * A History of the English Language, edited by Richard Hoggand David Denison, Cambridge University Press, 51 Opp, £75
* The Oxford History of English, edited by Lynda Mugglestone, Oxford University Press, 496pp,£30...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
