Letter Writing and Language Change

includes index and biblioraphy

Setting the scene : Letters, Standards and Historical Sociolinguistics ..........1 Assessing variability and Change in Early English Letters .................14 Private letters as a Source for an Alternative history of Middle New High German ...............35 Language in Print and Handwriting ............53 Heterogeneity vs. Homogeneity ...................72 Emerging standards in the Colonies : Variation and the Canadian letter writer ............101 Linguistic fingerprints of Authors and Scribes .................114 Stylistic Variation ..........133 English Aristocratic Letters ............156 Early nineteenth-Century pauper Letters............185 A Non-Standard ? Exploring the evidence from nineteenth-century vernacular letters and diaries ....202 Archaism and Dialect in Irish Emigrant letters ...........223 Assessing heterogeneity ........240 Hypercorrection and the persistence of Local Features in writing ...........264 Epilogue :Where Next ............277