Mugglestone - The Oxford History of English

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south of India, and elsewhere in the East, to a wet-nurse’), dhobi (‘A native washerman in India’), purdah, or laager (S. African Du. lager) meaning ‘a camp, encampment’ which made its appearance in 1850. Africaans kop (‘a hill’) took on currency from the 1830s; biltong (‘strips of lean meat . . . dried in the sun’) was recorded from 1815. Hundreds of West Indian genus types are likewise given in the OED, along with terms such as jumby, deWned as a ‘ghost or evil spirit among American and West Indian Blacks’, a word Wrst attested—at least in the written sources used by the dictionary—in Charles Kingsley’s At Last (1871): (‘Out of the mud comes up—not jumbies, but—a multitude of small stones’). American readers, as Murray noted, were among the most enthusiastic in sending in evidence of the new uses they had found, providing a rich resource for English in a variety of geographical settings. The writer and diplomat George Perkins Marsh co-ordinated the American contributions for the early part of the dictionary, often comparing British English and American English in his own work. While he noted that the latter does not ‘discriminate so precisely in the meanings of words nor . . . employ so classic a diction’, a growing sense of linguistic nationalism is nevertheless evident, building on images of a triumphantly American English such as those earlier set forth by the American lexicographer Noah Webster, as in his two-volume American Dictionary of the English Language of

1828. As Marsh aYrmed, ‘In the tenses of the verbs, I am inclined to think that well-educated Americans conform more closely to grammatical propriety than the corresponding class in England’; likewise ‘gross departures from idiomatic propriety, such as diVerent to, for diVerent from are common in England, which none but very ignorant persons would be guilty of in America’.

As in previous eras, nineteenth-century language imaged forth the history of conXict. Nelson coined the Nelson touch (‘a stroke, action, or manner characteristic of Nelson’) in 1805; Napoleon became a term of marked productivity, gaining at least six transferred senses. Words such as balaclava and cardigan later provided an enduring lexical record of the Crimea. A ‘woollen covering for the head and neck worn esp. by soldiers on active service; named after the Crimean village of Balaclava near Sebastopol’, as the OED states. Cardigan was ‘named from the Earl of Cardigan, distinguished in the Crimean war’. Raglan was similar; taken from the name of Lord Raglan, the British commander in the Crimean War, it denoted ‘an overcoat without shoulder seams’, and with distinctive sleeves. Jingoism (and a range of derivative words) attests other aspects of war. ‘We don’t want to Wght, yet by Jingo! if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too’, as the popular music hall song by G. W. Hunt aYrmed in 1878 in a form of words which became the rallying cry of those who wanted to enter into conXict with Russia.

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A productive mingling of Englishes from a range of sources is attested in words such as Australian leather-jacket (‘a kind of pancake’) and barney (Wrst attested in the New Zealand Evening Post in 1880 with the sense ‘to argue’), or shout (‘To stand drinks, to treat a crowd of persons to refreshments’), a common colloquialism in mid-nineteenth century Australia and New Zealand. Canadian terms for the ‘The master of a fur-trading post’ (postmaster) and ‘The Wlling of cracks in the walls of a house or log-cabin with mud’ (mudding) likewise make their appearance at this time. French meanwhile continued to conWrm its dominance in fashionable discourse. The politician Robert Peel (in spite of his StaVordshire accent) spoke ‘with a foreign tournure de phrases which I delight in’, as Lady Sheely noted in her diary in January 1819. That she was not alone in these preferences is amply attested by the linguistic practices of countless nineteenthcentury writers. Mary Ponsonby, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, commends Osborne on the Isle of Wight for ‘a certain kind of luxe which exists nowhere else’; she describes Victoria herself as ‘dorlete`de’ (‘spoiled’). Betise (favoured by Disraeli) and de´range´ (used by Victoria) provide other examples of this trend, as does Lord Alexander Lennox’s use of engouement (‘unreasoning fondness’) in a letter to Disraeli in January 1853. The latter was much in vogue, as in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848): ‘She repaid Miss Crawley’s engoument by artless sweetness and friendship’. Condemned as a species of linguistic aVectation by Kington-Oli- phant, such forms were essentially ‘aliens’, as the OED conWrmed. ‘Not in habitual use’, they lacked full assimilation into the language. Other loans meanwhile could assume the more permanent occupation denoted by the OED’s category of ‘denizens’—those ‘fully naturalized as to use, but not as to form, inXexion, or pronunciation’ (although even these might, with continued use, pass into the category of ‘naturals’). Here might be included words such as debacle, originally borrowed from French in the specialized sense, ‘A breaking up of ice in a river; in Geol. a sudden deluge or violent rush of water, which breaks down opposing barriers, and carries before it blocks of stone and other debris’. ‘They could have been transported by no other force than that of a tremendous deluge or debacle of water’, William Buckland, the Oxford Professor of Minerology, wrote in 1823. Later transferred uses demonstrate continuing processes of assimilation (‘In the nightly de´baˆcle [he] is often content to stand aside’, as an article in the Graphic stated in 1887).

New forms from closer to home demonstrate the unremitting fertility of lexis. Words such as Banting (and its associated verb to bant) and blueism provide evidence of changing preoccupations and social roles. The former, as the OED records, was the ‘name of a London cabinet-maker, whose method of reducing corpulence by avoiding fat, starch, and sugar in food, was published and much

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discussed in the year 1864’. The latter designated ‘the characteristics of a ‘‘blue’’ or ‘‘blue-stocking’’; feminine learning or pedantry’ and was in use from 1822. Lexical items such as telegram and photo, entomologize and phonograph conWrm other advances. Even if not all of these met with approval, their presence was indisputable, duly being recorded by the OED. ScientiWc terms represented an area of conspicuous growth with -ology emerging as particularly popular suYx. Biology

(1819), embryology (dated to 1859 in the OED in Darwin’s Origin of Species, although in fact used by him—and others—some time earlier), vulcanology (‘The science or scientiWc study of volcanoes’), and petrology (among scores of others) all owe their beginnings to this time. Similar was -itis, as in appendicitis, a word Wrst used in 1886 (and hence omitted from the OED’s second fascicle AntBatten which had been published one year previously). Bronchitis (1814), conjunctivitis (1835), dermatitis (1876), and gastritis (1806) attest further examples (tartanitis—not in the OED—was used to describe Victoria’s Scottish enthusiasms after her acquisition of Balmoral in 1847). These too could meet popular resistance. ‘Surely you will not attempt to enter all the crack-jaw medical and surgical terms’, the surgeon James Dixon (a frequent contributor to the OED) wrote to Murray, vainly urging their exclusion from the dictionary.

Charles Dodgson’s inventions of chortle (from chuckle and snort) and slithy (from slimy and lithe) meanwhile presented examples of what he christened ‘portmanteau words’ (since they contained two meanings within the same unit which, just like a nineteenth-century portmanteau case, could be opened up to reveal two parts). Elsewhere, however, word-formation processes could evolve into highly partisan aVairs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge condemned talented as a ‘vile and barbarous vocable’, decreeing that ‘the formulation of a participle passive from a noun is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can excuse’. In common with a number of other writers, he blamed America as a source of linguistic decline (‘Most of these pieces of slang come from America’). The OED meanwhile presented the rise of talented with impeccable objectivity, providing corroboratory evidence from a range of writers including Southey, Herschel, and Pusey. The OED’s entry for enthuse (‘An ignorant back-formation from enthusiasm’) could, on the other hand, reveal a problematic slippage into subjectivity. Back-formations were by no means indicative of ignorance, as can be conWrmed by other nineteenth-century coinages such as adsorb, demarcate, and extradite.

Resistance to on-going semantic shifts—occasionally glimpsed even in the OED, as in the entries in the Wrst edition of the dictionary for enormity, avocation, and transpire—was conspicuous in popular language comment. Prestige was a particular target, and the neglect of its etymological meaning (‘An illusion; a

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conjuring trick; a deception, an imposture’) in favour of transferred senses by which it came to mean ‘Blinding or dazzling inXuence; ‘magic’, glamour; inXuence or reputation’ was often decried. Similar was the continuing demise of decimate in its etymological sense of ‘to reduce by a tenth’. Instances in which it signiWed ‘to destroy’, as in a letter from ‘A Perthshire Farmer’ which appeared in the Scotsman in 1859 (‘Next morning a severe frost set in which lasted ten days, and my Weld of turnips was absolutely decimated; scarce a root was left untouched’) were singled out for public condemnation, as in Hodgson’s Errors of English (1881). Countless new senses nevertheless managed to appear in nineteenth-century English without prompting prescriptive censure, as in the changed values which adaptation, variation, and evolution all came to have in a post-Darwinian era.

While other notions of propriety led to the exclusion of words such as condom and cunt (as well as some slang terms such as bounder) from the Wrst edition of the OED, the dictionary nevertheless gives a compelling picture of the idiomatic vigour of nineteenth-century English. Outside strait-laced stereotypes by which forms such as trousers might be referred to as unmentionables (a euphemistic practice deftly satirized by Dickens in his Sketches by Boz) and in which designations such as breeches were likewise to be avoided, constructions such as a fat lot and a Wt of the clevers, a put-up job, and to get it in the neck, proliferated. In the nineteenth century, one could be as boiled as an owl (i.e. drunk) or a shingle short (an Australian colloquialism which co-existed alongside ‘a tile loose’); here too can be found Wgurative phrases such as a bad taste in the mouth and a bolt out of the blue, the latter used by Carlyle in 1837, or—in another new type of word creation—the initialisms of P.D.Q. (recorded in the OED, originally in America, from 1878) and O.K., another form of American origin which spread rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. Such forms take us far closer to the colloquial texture of nineteenth-century usage, confronting us once again with a dynamism which is impossible to ignore.

References and Suggestions for Further Reading

Transitions

The opening quotation is taken from Lytton (1833: I, 163). Excellent introductions to nineteenth-century history can be found in Black and Macraild (2003) and Newsome (1997); see also Matthew (2000a). As in other chapters, biographies and collections of personal correspondence (as well as private diaries) have been used to give insights not only into the socio-historical context, but also into features of language in use in

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domains outside those of public printed texts. See especially Smith (1995–2000) for the letters of Charlotte Bronte¨; see Burkhardt (1996), Burkhardt and Smith (1985–), and also Browne (2003) for Charles Darwin; see House and Storey (1965) for Dickens, see Mitchell (2003) for Disraeli; Haight (1954–78) for George Eliot’s letters; see James (1993) for Faraday’s letters; for Anne Lister, see Liddington (1998); for the engineer George Stephenson, see Skeat (1973). The diaries of Katherine Clarendon and Harriet Acworth can be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. For other accounts of nineteenth-century English, see especially Bailey (1996) and Go¨rlach (1999) and the relevant volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language, ed. Romaine (1998). Phillipps (1994) oVers a nuanced discussion of the social sensibilities which often surrounded nineteenth-century usage (especially in terms of lexis and semantics).

The history of the OED—and its original foundation as the New English Dictionary—is discussed in Mugglestone (2002b) and also, in more detail, in Mugglestone (2004); see also the biography of James Murray by his granddaughter (Murray 1977). The data and citations of the OED—as for earlier chapters in this volume—provide a valuable linguistic resource for documenting language—and language change—at this time. The opening page of Mann (1862) is the source of the quotation on p. 275.

For transformations of print culture and literacy, see James (1976), Klancher (1987), and Altick (1998). Education and language is discussed in Mugglestone (2003a). Details of the impact of the telegraph and telephone can be found in Matthew (2000b). For nineteenth-century shifts in the use of class, see Mugglestone (2003a), especially chapter 2, and also CorWeld (1987), Joyce (1991); for changes in pronunciation (and its signiWcance) over this time, see McMahon (1998) and Mugglestone (2003a). Hon. Henry H. is discussed in the latter (see especially pp. 108–11). Lambert (1964) provides a useful biography of the rise and fall of George Hudson. For nineteenth-century philology, see AarsleV (1983). Ellis’s comments on variability can be found in Ellis (1869–89: vol. IV, 1089). For the other languages of nineteenth-century Britain, see Pittock (1999) and also Black and Macraild (2003).

Myths of stasis

Chapter 1 of Bailey (1996) discusses of the traditional neglect of nineteenth-century English. Lennie (1864: 15) is the source of the quotation on p. 278–9 which conWrms changing criteria of acceptability for spelling. Ellis (1869: 591) analyses the public/ private discrepancy in spelling practices; for the responsibilities of the nineteenthcentury printer, see Stower (1808). The editorial comments on the perceived deWciencies of nineteenth-century writers in their use of language can be found respectively in Slater (2003: xxxvi–ii), House and Storey (1965: xxvi), Taylor (1994: 40), and Hutchinson (1904: iv).

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For nineteenth-century grammar (and grammars) see Michael (1987); those discussed in the chapter, for example Harrison (1848) and Duncan (1890), represent a small fraction of those published, although their concerns can often be seen as representative. See Dekeyser (1996) for a good account of nineteenth-century prescriptivism; Hodgson (1881) provides an extensive list of perceived errors in usage, as does Ladell (1897); Duncan’s criticisms of English in use can be found in Duncan (1890: 47– 8). Pearson’s criticisms of regional grammar are taken from Pearson (1865: 32). Hall (1873) is a good example of a writer who forcefully resisted the rise of the progressive passive; for a similar position, see Live and Learn (1872: 52). The citations from the Darwin correspondence on p. 282 are taken (respectively) from Burkhardt and Smith (1985–, I: 109); and Browne (2003, I: 155). See Denison (1998) for a good analysis of the range of constructions covered here. The subjunctive is discussed by S. L. I, Fashion in Language (1906: 28); Harrison (1848: 279) gives an earlier analysis. Evidence of Millais’s variability is taken from Fleming (1998: 196). The nineteenth-century fondness for exercises in ‘false syntax’ is discussed by Go¨rlach (2003).

Live and Learn (1872: 62) supplies a range of good examples of resistance to change in progress; the examples of variability given on p. 284 are taken from Burkhardt’s (1996) edition of Darwin’s letters and, for the Davy/ Faraday/ Phillips correspondence, from James (1993, I: 178, I: 219), although other examples could easily be found. For Shelley, see Seymour (2000: 446). Bradley (1904: 71) is the source of the criticism of on-going change (and Americanisms) given on p. 284. For the treatment of case in nineteenth-century English, see Dekeyser (1975). For Ward’s usage, see Sutherland (1990: 172), and for the Martineau/ Lytton correspondence discussed on p., see Mitchell (2003: 116). For pronouns in Barnes, see Barnes (1864: 20), and Austin and Jones (2002, chapter 4).

For prescriptivism and the Wrst edition of the OED, see Mugglestone (2002c). For nineteenth-century concerns with concord and number, see Dekeyser (1975). The transcript of Elizabeth Wheeler’s speech, given on 22 December 1854, can be found in Florence Nightingale and the Crimea (2000: 130). For Mary Anne Disraeli’s letter, see the (unpublished) Hughendon Papers (HP/A/I/A/509). For the usage of the Lyttelton sisters, see Fletcher (1997).

For nineteenth-century syntax, see Denison (1998) and Go¨rlach (1999); Davy’s letter to Faraday is taken from James (1993, I: 187). For Disraeli’s correction of his speeches, see Bradford (1982: 388). For the transcripts given on p. 288, see Florence Nightingale and the Crimea (2000, 148 and 69–70).

Pronounced distinctions

Evidence of William Darwin’s pronunciation can be found in Healey (2001: 176). For Ellis’s concern to describe rather than prescribe usage, see further Mugglestone (1996). For nineteenth-century prescriptivism in this context, see Mugglestone (2003a); /r/ and /h/ are discussed on pp. 86–128. Elocution was a popular pastime and Burrell’s concerns on p. 290 (1891: 24) can be taken as typical of late nineteenth-century attitudes

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in this context; see also Benzie (1972). Ellis’s formative discussion of RP can be found in Ellis (1869: 23) (although see further Mugglestone (1997)). Variability in nineteenthcentury speech is well-attested in a range of sources; see especially MacMahon (1998). For Victoria’s comments on language, see Hibbert (2000: 358); for Booth’s use of the ‘Xat’ a, see Mugglestone (2003a: 65–6). Smith (1866) can be used to exemplify prescriptive concerns on ‘good’ pronunciation in this category of words, see further Mugglestone (2003a: 77–85) and Lass (2000). Chapter 6 of the former examines educational concerns with the acquisition of a ‘good’ accent; the quotations from inspectors’ reports and educational textbooks are taken from p. 213; for Bronte¨’s move away from her original regional accent, see Gordon (1994: 40); for Eliot, see Karl (1995: 25). For Faraday’s endeavours to improve his English, see Pearce Williams (1965: 20 V). Henry Sweet’s sceptical discussion of the ‘correct speaker’ can be found in Sweet (1881: 5–6). Ellis’s transcriptions of ‘real speech’ are given in Ellis (1869–89: 1210–14).

Dialects and diVerence

Wales (2002) oVers a welcome shift from the traditional concentration on the standard variety alone; see also Milroy (2002). P’s and Q’s (1855: 25) exempliWes prescriptive and negative attitudes to regionality; for a very diVerent view, see Barnes (1864), and also Austin and Jones (2002). Holloway’s analogies between dialects and palaeontological research can be found in Holloway (1839: v). Fears for the future of rural dialects are discussed in Nicholson (1889: vi). The reports of the Committee on Devonshire Verbal Provincialisms were presented in 1885 and 1910. Robinson’s characterization of urban dialects can be found in Robinson (1862: xx).

A collection of working-class autobiographies (including those by John O’Neil, William Tayler, and Emanuel Lovekin) can be found in Burnett (1994); Burnett (1982) is also a useful resource, as is Burnett et al. (1984). For the diary of Thomas Swan, see Swan (1970). For Hopkinson’s journal, see Goodman (1968).

World of words

The main resource for nineteenth-century lexis and semantics remains the OED, though Bailey (1996), Go¨rlach (1999), and Hughes (2000) all provide useful accounts of lexical change and innovation over this time. Murray’s comments on the world of words are taken from his (unpublished) lectures in the Murray papers in the Bodleian Library; for the OED and opposition to words of science, see Mugglestone (2004, chapter4). For prescriptivism and the OED, see Mugglestone (2002c), chapter 5 of Mugglestone (2004), and Ward-Gilman (1990). Marsh (1860) provides a range of useful perspectives on English and American usage in the nineteenth century. For criticisms on innovation in nineteenth-century lexis, see especially Hodgson (1881). On the lexis of taboo and the OED, see Mugglestone (2002: 10–11), and also Mugglestone (2004), (2006, forthcoming), as well as BurchWeld (1973).

11

MODERN REGIONAL

ENGLISH IN THE BRITISH

ISLES

Clive Upton

the beginnings of dialectology

There can be no doubt that pure dialect speech is rapidly disappearing even in country districts, owing to the spread of education, and to modern facilities for intercommunication. The writing of this grammar was begun none too soon, for had it been delayed another twenty years I believe it would by then be quite impossible to get together suYcient pure dialect material to enable any one to give even a mere outline of the phonology of our dialects as they existed at the close of the nineteenth century.

WITH these words, written in 1905, Joseph Wright, the most famous English dialectologist of the nineteenth century, sought to draw a line under the formal study of vernacular speech that had occupied many academic linguists such as himself, and many other expert amateur enthusiasts such as ‘the Dorset poet’ William Barnes, for more than half a century. The movement of which Wright was a part, and of which his English Dialect Dictionary and English Dialect Grammar of 1898–1905 were a high point, had been driven by a realization that the regional speech of the then largely immobile (and little-educated) majority preserved forms of language with real pedigree, the study of which put linguists in touch with those older forms of language that were the real object

of their attention as philologists.

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In 1876 the famous German dialectologist Georg Wenker had begun to use the German dialects as a test-bed for the theory that sound changes, an object of especial interest for philologists, occurred regularly across all the words with that sound, and across all communities which used those words (the so-called ‘Neogrammarian Hypothesis’). Meanwhile, his contemporary in Britain, the gentleman-scholar Alexander Ellis, mentioned in the previous chapter, was himself embarking on a country-wide survey of existing dialects which would inform his On Early English Pronunciation. Ellis had made his Wrst attempt at writing dialectal pronunciation in 1848, and published his intention systematically to enquire into the subject in 1871, thereby putting him in the forefront internationally of those using non-standard speech to inform scholarly language study. The Wfth (and Wnal) volume of his great work on early pronunciation, which is wholly devoted to this issue, is a monument to this pioneer of data collection and presentation (including the devising of ‘Palaeotype’, an early form of phonetic notation), and of its interpretation.

Ellis’s work, of course, concentrated on pronunciation, the ‘accent’ component of dialect and, in mobilizing a small army of enthusiasts to provide information from around the country, he showed that others shared his interest and, in varying measures, were able to understand and use his notation system. In the contemporary drive to create a New English Dictionary (later known as the OED;), we can see a parallel passion of the age for the study of words, again with a focus on the diachronic, the career of the language in an historical dimension. Although the new great dictionary was to contain some current non-standard vocabulary such as bike (‘A nest of wasps, hornets, or wild bees’), labelled ‘north. dial.’, and rock (‘U.S. slang’ for ‘To throw stones at’), an early decision was taken that, in concert with the OED, an English Dialect Dictionary should be compiled, and in 1873 an English Dialect Society (the EDS) was created to undertake the task of gathering and ordering the material for this separate work. Under the leadership, amongst others, of W. W. Skeat, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge University and a prominent nineteenth-century philologist, and with such people as Ellis and Barnes within its ranks, the Society created an impressively wide-ranging set of glossaries and other publications which, whilst contributing in large measure to the Wnal Dictionary, are in themselves a continuing source of knowledge for the linguist concerned with variation.

We might proWtably consider here an item of information that has only very recently come to light in a rather neglected EDS glossary, but that is particularly relevant to a very modern dialectological concern. The pronunciation of think as Wnk and brother as bruvver, that is of [u] and [ð] as [f] and [v], is termed by

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linguists TH-Fronting (because the substitute pronunciations are produced with the tongue advanced in the mouth). A common supposition is that this is a feature which has been moving northwards from the south, and more precisely from the south-east, of England, beginning only in the very late nineteenth century. However, C. Clough Robinson’s glossary and grammar for mid-Yorkshire, published by the EDS in 1876, has, in its description of dialect sounds, the following for F:

There is a strong disposition to sound this consonant in the place of initial th, initially, in certain words, as in thratch (to quarrel sharply), through, thrust [fruost ], thimble [Wm u’l], throstle, throng, and in thought, as habitually pronounced by individuals [faowt ]. (Note the early phonetic notation here, following Ellis.)

It is apparent from this that, far from being unknown in the area, TH-Fronting was suYciently established as a feature of Yorkshire speech in the nineteenth century to attract linguistic comment: one suspects that closer systematic study of the EDS publications would shed further light on such current linguistic controversies.

Symptomatic of the mind-set that gave rise to the quotation heading this chapter is the fact that, having handed its materials to Joseph Wright in his role as editor of the English Dialect Dictionary, the EDS disbanded in 1896. The Society thought its job was done. Its members had gathered together the written record on vernacular speech from the previous 200 years, and had compiled glossaries and commentaries on current dialect words. It was felt that vocabularies of local vernaculars which had been little touched by other varieties—or indeed by the standard variety itself (as a result of geographical mobility and universal education)—had been collected, and not a moment too soon. According to this thinking, no one at a later date could have access to real ‘dialectal’ speech.

There is an element of truth in this. The nineteenth-century scholarly impetus for dialect study was, as we have noted, historical: if one’s focus is on the language of earlier times, the purer and the less cluttered with external inXuences the present-day object of study is, the better. Seen from a twenty-Wrst-century perspective, however, as we remain aware of considerable regional diVerences in speech and when, as we shall see, impulses other than the philological are driving the desire to study speech varieties, the late nineteenth-century view of the future of the discipline appears remarkably pessimistic. And even from an historical linguist’s standpoint, in fact, an announcement of the death of dialectology proved premature, as much of the best work in this area remained to be done.