994 VII Standardization

Lange, C. (2012). Standards in the history of English. In Bergs, A. & Brinton,

L. (Eds.), Historical linguistics of English: An international handbook (pp.
994–1005). De Gruyter.

62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English

1 Introduction
2 English standards
3 Summary
4 References

Abstract
Standardization may be regarded as a process or as an ideology, but in adopting a histor-
ical perspective on standards of English, the two approaches can hardly be kept apart.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of how standardization in general
has been conceptualized and how the relevant concepts have been applied to the
development of English standards in different periods of the history of the language.

1 Introduction
Accounts of the history of English generally agree on the following: the language spo-
ken in England which in retrospect is called Old English already possessed a (West
Saxon) written standard, a remarkable achievement in comparison with other Euro-
pean vernaculars. The further development of this standard language was, however, in-
terrupted by the Norman Conquest in 1066, when writing in the vernacular effectively
ceased, giving way to Latin and Norman French as the languages of record. When
English re-emerges as a written language early in the Middle English period, it is char-
acterized by such a degree of dialectal diversity that the period is frequently labelled
“transitional”. It is the Early Modern English period that is largely credited as the
era in which the development towards standard English gained momentum, and in
which overt efforts at codification began to have a notable impact on the speech com-
munity and the ongoing development of both spoken and written English. Late Modern
English then saw the further dissemination of the standard due to the rapid increase in
literacy and the advent of universal schooling. Our Present-day English standard, then,
can be traced back to late Middle English, but the most momentous events for a

Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 994–1006
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 995

historiography of English standardization are clustered in the Early and Late Modern
English periods.
This chapter provides a perspective on standardization throughout the history of
English. It does so by tracing and, wherever applicable, intertwining several strands
of research pertaining to English standard(ization)s. One way of approaching the
topic has already been alluded to above, namely the longstanding concern with search-
ing for the roots of the current (British English) standard, i.e. trying to (re)construct a
more or less unbroken tradition for English. This research tradition cuts across the
distinction made by, among others, Mugglestone (2003), between “processes” of stan-
dardization and “ideologies” of standardization. The most influential taxonomy of stan-
dardization processes comes from Haugen (1966), who also insisted that standardization
is inseparably bound up with the written language (although this may not universally be
the case, cf. Singh (2003) for South Asia). The developments observable in the ME
period, discussed in Section 2.2, will make it exceptionally clear that “for the process
of linguistic standardization the use of a language in writing is both its prerequisite and
its trigger” (Schaefer 2006: 4). Haugen’s classification will be the topic of Section 1.1.
Section 1.2 will introduce research focussing on ideologies of standardization. As I
will argue, standard ideologies are a post-hoc phenomenon in that they are predicated
on an already existing standard; that is, they can only emerge at a relatively late stage in
the history of English standard(ization)s. Synchronically, standard ideologies inform
speakers’ attitudes, which in turn drive the dissemination and maintenance of standard
English. Diachronically, the influence of the standard ideology is apparent in the body
of knowledge produced by historical linguists: Milroy (2000: 15–16) sees it at work in
the “historicisation” of English, i.e. the conferring of legitimacy upon the (standard)
language by writing its history.
Section 2 will disentangle the polysemy of the term “standard” as it has been applied
throughout the history of English. We will see that in different periods, various levels of
linguistic organization were prominent in undergoing standardization, and the term
“standard” as established by scholars for a particular variety in a particular period
therefore varies widely in its scope. Section 2.1 will deal with what has been labelled
“Standard Old English” or “West Saxon (literary) standard”. Section 2.2 will focus on
the trilingual communicative space in the Middle English period and the re-emergence
of English vernacular writing as a precondition for further standardization. Early Mod-
ern and Late Modern standardization processes and ideologies will be the topic of
Sections 2.3 and 2.4, respectively.

1.1 Processes of standardization

Being in possession of a standard is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a
language, if we look upon “language” as the property of a speech community with
shared norms (cf. Labov 1972: 27). A standard combines the two requirements of “min-
imal variation in form” and “maximal variation in function” (Haugen 1966: 931) and
thus goes far beyond the notion of shared norms. In order to get a clearer understanding
of the polysemous terms “language” and “norm” and their correspondences, it is help-
ful to recollect Coseriu’s model of language (Coseriu 1971), as e.g. put forward by Koch
(1988).
996 VII Standardization

Coseriu distinguishes three levels of language: first, there is the universal level of
language as the common property of all humans. Human linguistic activities are typ-
ically realized in a particular language such as English or French (which he labels
languaged[escriptive]) and, more specifically, in individual discourses. A languaged is
marked by “historicity”: “external historicity” accounts for the indubitable fact that
there are different languages, and “internal historicity” is related to the variation within
a languaged (Koch 1988: 330). A languaged, then, can be conceptualized as a variational
space, where each (regional, social, etc.) variety has its own norms: “In dieser Hinsicht
ist eine Normd eine historisch-sozial begrenzt gültige sprachliche Tradition innerhalb
einer Sprached (die ihrerseits historisch begrenzt ist)” [In this respect, a normd is a his-
torically and socially limited tradition within a languaged (which in turn is historically
limited)] (Koch 1988: 330).
Over the last centuries, most European languages with a written tradition have been
affected by standardization processes. This development coincided with the rise of the
nation-state, so that a language without a standard is nowadays hardly conceivable:
“Nation and language have become inextricably intertwined. Every self-respecting
nation has to have a language. Not just a medium of communication, a ‘vernacular’,
or a ‘dialect’, but a fully developed language. Anything less marks it as undeveloped”
(Haugen 1966: 927).
Haugen also provides the four main reference points for a discussion of standardization
processes, namely

(1) selection of norm;

(2) codification of form;
(3) elaboration of function;
(4) acceptance by the community (Haugen 1966: 933).

Whereas (1) necessarily represents the first step in any standardization process and
(4) its final stage, (2) and (3) may apply to different degrees at different times during
the process, depending on the actual level of the language undergoing standardization
(for a different view on the sequence of steps, see Deumert and Vandenbussche
2003: 4–7). In Coseriu’s terms, step (1) typically extends the range of one of the normsd
that form part of languaged, such that, eventually, one normd(escriptive) becomes coexten-
sive with the normp(rescriptive) for languaged: “the process of standardization works by
promoting invariance or uniformity in language structure […] standardization consists
of the imposition of uniformity upon a class of objects” (Milroy 2001: 531). Step (2),
codification of form, is typically accomplished by dictionaries, grammars, usage guides,
and in some cases academies; again, this stage is inconceivable without a high degree of
literacy. Elaboration of function may happen before or parallel to codification; another
common term for this process is Ausbau (following Kloss 1967, 1978), a notion that has
recently been reconceptualized by Fishman (2008). Whereas steps (1) and (2) satisfy the
demand of “minimal variation in form”, Ausbau operates mainly on the level of syntax
and the lexicon and is the precondition for an incipient standard language to achieve
“maximal variation in function”. Acceptance, finally, marks the last stage in the develop-
ment towards uniformity in language: once the standard language is generally accepted,
any further development is arrested or at least slowed down considerably, and linguists
typically turn to non-standard varieties to track down signs of language change.
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 997

Haugen’s four dimensions of standardization provided the frame of reference for

individual as well as comparative studies of standardization processes (e.g. Nevalainen
2003; Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003; Schaefer 2006). An alternative taxonomy
comes from Milroy and Milroy (1991), who have identified “selection”, “acceptance”,
“diffusion”, “maintenance”, “elaboration of function”, “codification”, and “prescrip-
tion” as constitutive of standardization processes (see Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon
van Ostade [2006] for an application of this model to standardization in English).
Milroy and Milroy go beyond Haugen in adding “diffusion”, “maintenance”, and “pre-
scription” to their model, the latter two terms reflecting their focus on the effect of stan-
dard ideologies. Before I turn to these, it is necessary to discuss to what extent Haugen’s
classification has stood the test of time.
Haugen’s step (1), the selection of a norm, might be taken to imply that it is one
clearly demarcated variety of a languaged that is selected as the input to all further stan-
dardization processes. However, research has shown that “[m]ost standard languages
are composite varieties which have developed over time, and which include features
from several dialects” (Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003: 5), an insight which can
be captured with Haugen’s refined notions of “the unitary thesis of selection” and
“the compositional thesis of selection” (Haugen 1972), or, in Deumert and Vanden-
bussche’s terms, “monocentric selection” and “polycentric selection” (Deumert and
Vandenbussche 2003: 4).
Work by Nevalainen (e.g. 2003, 2006) has drawn attention to a process which
she calls “supralocalisation” and which tends to precede selection as the first step in
Haugen’s model:

Supralocalisation is here used as an umbrella term to refer to the geographical diffusion of

linguistic features beyond their region of origin. When supralocalisation takes place, it typ-
ically results in dialect levelling, loss of marked and/or rare elements. In this respect it
achieves the chief goal of standardisation, to reduce the amount of permissible variation.
However, and this should be stressed, many processes of supralocalisation in English, both
today and in the past, have been induced naturally by dialect contacts without any con-
scious effort toward producing an official standard language (Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon
van Ostade 2006: 288).

Supralocalization is thus akin to “accommodation” in face-to-face-interaction, but with

an additional diachronic dimension. Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade stress
that supralocalization happens “naturally” in contact situations: to apply Coseriu’s
terms again, supralocalization falls out naturally from the universal level of language,
as all human linguistic activity is marked by “reflexivity”, i.e. it is intersubjective and
typically directed at some “alter ego” (Koch 1988: 337). Implicit in the definition
above is the notion that dialect contact is just as natural (that is, “universal” in Coseriu’s
sense) as supralocalization; and there has indeed been a growing recognition in recent
years that English has to be conceptualized as a contact language throughout its history
(cf. Trotter 2000; Mesthrie 2006).

1.2 Ideologies of standardization

Prior to standardization, the variational space of a language is largely unstructured,
where “unstructured” is not meant to imply one large homogeneous space; rather, it
998 VII Standardization

designates the absence of a hierarchical ordering of varieties. Each variety within lan-
guaged has its own normsd and its range of functions. Once the standard is in place, how-
ever, the variational space is restructured: the standard variety serves as the focal point
within that space, and other varieties are demoted to the status of dialects:

The establishment of the idea of a standard variety, the diffusion of knowledge of this vari-
ety, its codification in widely used grammar books and dictionaries, and its promotion in a
wide range of functions – all lead to the devaluing of other varieties. The standard form be-
comes the legitimate form, and other forms become, in the popular mind, illegitimate. His-
torical linguists have been prominent in establishing this legitimacy, because, of course, it is
important that a standard language, being the language of a nation state and, sometimes, a
great empire, should share in the (glorious) history of that nation state (Milroy 2001: 547).

One effect of the standard ideology which has become engrained in the historiography
of English historical linguistics is the “historicization” of English: “The historicization
of the language requires that it should possess a continuous unbroken history, a respect-
able and legitimate ancestry and a long pedigree. It is also highly desirable that it should
be as pure and unmixed as possible” (Milroy 2001: 549). Historicization is instrumental
in bestowing legitimacy on a language: the language is conceptualized as essentially the
same entity throughout centuries, even millennia, abstracting away from obvious lin-
guistic change. Thus reference to the people’s common language may serve to establish
the link to some collective ancestry, and it may further serve to justify political and/or
territorial claims based on this apparent collective property.
At first sight, Milroy’s use of the term “historicization” seems to clash with Koch’s
notion of “historicity”:

Der Standard ist einerseits als eine der Normend und damit als begrenzt gültig anzusehen.
Er muß andererseits aber auch als Normp gesehen werden, was seine Historizität ansatz-
weise relativiert, denn die Normp lebt im Raum einer Einzelsprache von der Fiktion ihrer
unbegrenzten Gültigkeit, also ihrer Befreiung von der Historizität (Koch 1988: 332).
‘On the one hand, the standard has to be seen as one of the normsd and therefore as of
limited validity. On the other hand, it has to be seen as normp, which partly serves to re-
lativize its historicity, since normp thrives on the fiction of its unlimited validity within the
[variational] space of a languaged, thus its liberation from historicity’.

Milroy’s “historicization” refers to the assertion that a languaged such as English has
essentially been around forever: historicization downplays what Coseriu called the
internal and external historicity of language, for example by privileging internal moti-
vations for linguistic change over external motivations (cf. Milroy 2000: 15). Similarly,
when a descriptive normd turns into normp, i. e. the standard, it becomes an ideological
construct, and it is “conceived of as unmarked, stable, and uniform” (Johnston and
Lange 2006: 192).
Milroy and Milroy (1991) stress the negative consequences of the standard ideology:
once the standard is in place, it imposes a binary distinction between legitimate and ille-
gitimate forms of the language. This awareness of the standard is not restricted to lan-
guage specialists, but affects the whole speech community: “An extremely important
effect of standardization has been the development of consciousness among speakers
of a ‘correct’, or canonical, form of a language” (Milroy 2001: 535). Adherence to
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 999

the standard typically becomes imbued with ideological underpinnings. The devaluing
of non-canonical varieties entails the devaluing of their speakers: language use becomes
available as a social symbol that may be enlisted to express and maintain inequalities in
society. The standard can be used as a gatekeeper, granting or preventing access to the
linguistic marketplace. These manifestations of the standard ideology are particularly
evident from the 19th century onwards, as will be shown in Section 2.4 (cf. Finegan,
Chapter 60; Percy, Chapter 62).
Another noteworthy perspective on linguistic standardization comes from Geeraerts
(2003). He identifies two “cultural models” pertaining to standardization and national-
ism: the “rationalist” and the “romantic” model. A romantic model of standardization
is based on the view that

languages are primarily expressive rather than communicative. They express an identity,
and they do so because they embody a particular conception of the world, a world view
or ‘Weltanschauung’ in the sense of Herder. […] if languages or language varieties embody
a specific identity, then a preference for one language or language variety rather than
another implies that the specific identity of a specific group of people is neglected or
denied. […] A correlative of this position is the positive evaluation of variety (Geeraerts
2003: 37).

In Geeraerts’ terminology, the Milroys’ approach would be “romantic” in that it con-

ceives of the standard primarily as a medium of social exclusion, to the detriment of
linguistic – and ultimately social – diversity. From the rationalist perspective, a lan-
guage is simply a medium of communication, and the endorsement of the standard
as a neutral medium of social participation becomes a democratic ideal (Geeraerts
2003: 40). Geeraerts traces the development of the two cultural models of standard-
ization throughout the history of European nation states into the modern globalized
world, where romanticists despise the global spread of English as a threat, whereas
rationalists cherish it as an opportunity (Geeraerts 2003: 55) (see Grzega, Volume 2,
Chapter 136).

2 English standards
This section will bring to bear the preceding general considerations on processes and
ideologies of standardization on the history of standard(izations) in English. As else-
where in this volume, the customary periodization of the history of English is adopted
(cf. Curzan, Volume 2, Chapter 79).

2.1 Old English

From a European perspective, English is remarkable in being the first vernacular com-
mitted to writing (cf. Schaefer, Volume 2, Chapter 81). The first Old English texts date
from the 8th century. Most of the texts that have come down to us are written in the
West Saxon dialect (see Sauer and Waxenberger, Chapter 22), and if the term “standard”
is applied to Old English, it is generally used with reference to this variety. Nevalainen
and Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2006: 271) claim that “the earliest standardisation
attempts, which go back as far as King Alfred (b. 849–901 [sic]) and even beyond,
1000 VII Standardization

aimed at making English – or rather West Saxon – the official language”. There is, how-
ever, consensus in the literature that “[i]f Old English did acquire a standard language,
then it is to be found, not in the works of Alfred, but in those of Ælfric, a century
later” (Hogg 2006: 399). King Alfred and his scribes may surely be credited with estab-
lishing West Saxon alongside Latin in the Anglo-Saxon communicative space as a written
language, thereby contributing to its subsequent elaboration, but tracing the standard to
their time “and even beyond” seems to be exaggerated – or, in Milroy’s terms, evidence
for the standard ideology.
“Standard Old English” as conceived of by Gneuss (1972) is the variety of late West
Saxon written by bishop Æthelwold, his prolific disciple Ælfric, and others in the scrip-
torium at Winchester. Gneuss’ evidence for a standard is lexical: he identified a lexical
set which he called “Winchester words” in the writings of the Winchester scribes and
traced the supralocal dissemination of this vocabulary. Further evidence for the claim
that “Ælfric aimed at standardizing Old English in its written form” (Gretsch
2006: 171) comes from an examination of the manuscript revisions being carried out
by Ælfric, which showed a high degree of consistency in the spelling of e.g. inflectional
endings. In meticulously editing his manuscripts and regularizing variants, Ælfric was
acting in the spirit of the Benedictine reform: the sacred word had to be kept unchanged
(cf. Kornexl 2000: 266).
Both notions of “standard Old English”, however, have been open to criticism.
Kornexl (2000: 261) points out that the concept of “Winchester words” has been
overgeneralized to justify the claim that there is indeed a standard Old English: the
confusion surrounding the notion “standard Old English” is largely due to a misunder-
standing of Gneuss’ original contribution. Whether Ælfric’s carefully revised language
may be called a standard language is also doubtful. Gretsch (2006: 172) acknowledges
that “what Ælfric wrote was not ‘Standard Old English’ per se, but ‘Ælfric’s Standard
Old English’, and that this existed side by side with other standards, though perhaps
none as systematic as his was”. Accordingly, there is no meaningful way of attribut-
ing a “standard” to Old English in the sense outlined in Section 1.1 above: “Ælfric’s
language was neither selected nor codified by others” (Hogg 2006: 401). Hogg there-
fore suggests discarding the notion “standard” with reference to Ælfric’s language
and following Smith (1996) in referring to “standardised or to focused written lan-
guage: such usages remind us that we are dealing with a process of normative focus-
ing rather than with a fixed set of forms” (Smith 1996: 67). (See further Kornexl,
Chapter 24.)
Writing in Old English came to an abrupt end with the Norman Conquest in 1066:

Most scholars agree that the late West Saxon Schriftsprache was an artificial standard
which masked both dialectal variation and the development of the changes which distin-
guish Middle from Old English […] Such a standard language could be kept in place
only by careful scribal training in English; the end of such training was the beginning of
‘Middle English’. The appearance of characteristically Middle English spellings in
twelfth-century manuscripts may be regarded as the shredding of a tattered veil, not the
manifestation of new developments (Liuzza 2000: 144–145).

There is thus no direct continuity between Old English and the emerging standards of
later periods; again, English is unusual among the European vernaculars in undergoing
Ausbau twice.
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 1001

2.2 Middle English

The Middle English period is generally neglected in accounts of English standardiza-
tions, and for good reasons: the Norman Conquest in 1066 caused, among other things,
a far-reaching rearrangement of the communicative space. The highly developed tradi-
tion of vernacular writing collapsed: English effectively ceased to be used as the lan-
guage of government record and was once more confined to spoken registers.
Written records were kept in Latin and French, and it is only in the 14th century
that the vernacular resurfaced in the written mode to any extent. When it did so, writing
in the vernacular was “particular and local”, and consequently, “the Middle English
period is, notoriously, the time when linguistic variation is fully reflected in the written
mode” (Smith 1996: 68). We therefore have to deal mainly with the preconditions for
standardization that characterized the Middle English period, namely textualization
of the vernacular and processes of supralocalization. Nevertheless, a precursor of the
present-day standard has been identified in the Middle English communicative space:
the so-called “Chancery standard”, which will briefly be discussed below.
As Schaefer (2006) has shown, the “boost of literacy” in English in the 14th century
marked “the decisive step toward a future standard as the function of English was
extended” (Schaefer 2006: 9). English simultaneously underwent “extensive” and “inten-
sive” elaboration: the vernacular was used in more and more domains which were hith-
erto reserved for Latin and French, extending its functional range within the trilingual
communicative space of medieval England. Accordingly, the language, in transition
from orality to literacy, had to acquire the structural means that were appropriate for
the written medium. The notion of “textualization” captures the fact that the transfer
from the spoken to the written medium involves much more than just “scripting”, i.e.
creating a verbatim written version of the spoken word (cf. also chapter 2 of the introduc-
tion to A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325 [LAEME]; Laing and Lass
2007). From the 14th century onwards, “English gained ground by being elaborated with
the help of those languages that had already achieved a more or less long institutional
standing as carriers of literate discursive practices” (Schaefer 2006: 12).
These processes of structural elaboration, ultimately serving the goal of “maximum
variation in function” were sustained by the literate minority; in a sense, they constitute
“language change from above”, even if they did not necessarily entail a conscious deci-
sion on the part of the writers to impose their usage on others. Those processes of su-
pralocalization that are apparent in the Middle English period, on the other hand, are
clearly instances of “change from below”: first steps towards reduction of variation
and thus towards “minimum variation in form” were taken when a levelled “colourless
language” emerged, following the large-scale migration throughout the period with Lon-
don as the centre of gravity. The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME)
(McIntosh et al. 1986) maps testify to the gradual diffusion of such supraregional dialec-
tal features in the late Middle English period. Nevalainen (2006) has examined this pro-
cess for several morphosyntactic features, likewise noting a tendency towards reduction
in variation. However, in the period under discussion “supralocalisation did not equate
to standardisation” (Nevalainen 2006: 130).
This conclusion may also be drawn when considering the accumulated evidence
which calls for a reassessment of the notion “Chancery English”, a term that goes
back to Samuels (1963) and was subsequently endorsed by Fisher (1984, 1996).
1002 VII Standardization

“Chancery English” and its position within the communicative space of medieval
England are discussed extensively in Schaefer (Chapter 33); suffice it to say here that
the term designates “a form of fifteenth-century London English identified as the direct
ancestor of the modern written standard” (Benskin 2004: 1). Smith (1996: 68–73) has
already drawn attention to the fact that Chancery English admitted of much more spel-
ling variation than one would expect from a “standard”, and Benskin (2004) effectively
delivers the coup de grâce to the notion of “Chancery standard”, listing a host of
inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Fisher’s account and concluding:

Chancery’s ordinary administrative practice did nothing to promote English of any sort,
but rather, for the purposes of government, retarded it. […] Chancery Standard was
Latin, and save for nine years during the Commonwealth, it remained so until 1731 (Benskin
2004: 37–38).

Following Benskin’s carefully assembled evidence, we can safely shift the notion of a
“Chancery Standard” from the realm of “processes of standardization” towards the
realm of “ideologies of standardization”. Benskin suggests taking a fresh perspective on
the beginnings of standard English that discards the fixation on Chancery English – and,
we may add, the fixation on spelling with respect to standardization processes.

2.3 Early Modern English

Even though the writers of earlier periods did not abstain fully from commenting upon
language and evaluating language varieties, it is in the Early Modern period that meta-
linguistic comments start to proliferate, providing evidence for the social indexing of
linguistic variation. Such comments frequently appear in dictionaries and grammars,
the prototypical instruments of codification whose publication is also on the rise
throughout the period, culminating towards the end of the 18th century (cf. Nevalainen
2003: 143). Contributing cultural factors were the advent of printing and the rapid rise
of a literate middle class. (See Schaefer, Volume 2, Chapter 81).
The first level of linguistic organization to achieve a fairly high degree of uniformity
was spelling: the “efflorescence of different English writing systems” (Smith 2008: 215)
which characterized the Middle English period gave way to a consistent orthography by
1650 (cf. Nevalainen 2003: 138). Smith suggests seeing this as a more or less natural con-
sequence of the extensive elaboration of English: variation became “inconvenient, and
a communicatively driven process of dialectal muting began to reduce the range of
written variation” (Smith 2008: 215).
Similar processes of supralocalization converged to reduce variation in morphosyn-
tax, as Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2006: 291–299) have shown. Features
that originally were restricted to a regional variety of English lost their regional mark-
ing over time and gained currency in a composite supralocal variety. Again, there is no
uniform source for the morphosyntactic features that eventually emerged as the stan-
dard features. One tentative conclusion is that “most grammatical features that made
their way to the supralocal Gemeinsprache during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries diffused from the capital region to the rest of the country” (Nevalainen and
Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2006: 295).
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 1003

In terms of standardization processes, the EModE period is probably best known

for the conscious attempts at elaboration and codification of the lexicon. When it
comes to the lexicon, the notion of standardization as promoting uniformity and invar-
iance becomes slightly paradoxical: by definition, the lexicon is open-ended and cannot
be subject to reduction of variation in the same way as, say, orthography. Likewise,
“codification” with respect to the lexicon in the Early Modern English period does
not mean “fixing once and for all”; it rather pertains to intensive elaboration with
the help of (mainly) Latin (see Vezzosi, Volume 2, Chapter 108), which made the
many “hard-word-dictionaries” of the period necessary. In the cultural context of the
Renaissance, the importance of Latin as the prestige language in the contemporary
communicative space was renewed.
Finally, it should be noted that while the development towards “minimal variation in
form” accelerated considerably in the early Modern English period, this period also
marked the beginning of a trend in the opposite direction: with the dawn of colonial expan-
sion, English became “transplanted” to new territories, where the language rapidly – and
naturally – developed separate norms, and, in some cases, eventually separate standards
(cf. the contributions in Section XIV, Volume 2). Just as domestic variation converged,
so the incipient globalization of English provided for the modern pluricentricity of the
language. (See further Moessner, Chapter 44.)

2.4 Late Modern English

The 18th and 19th centuries are generally regarded as the age of prescriptivism par
excellence (cf. Finegan, Chapter 60). Unlike countries such as France, England never
established an academy for “correcting, improving and ascertaining the English ton-
gue”, as Swift famously demanded in 1712. The enterprise of codifying English in gram-
mars and usage books was thus not entrusted upon a single recognizable institution, but
carried out by individuals, for a variety of reasons. In a sense, the first institution which
actively promoted the standard – as well as the standard ideology – is the school: it is
schooling for all that firmly establishes the “standard language culture” (Milroy
2001: 530) in the speech community as a whole.
Whatever their motives, the “codifiers” of English (cf. Percy, Chapter 63) clearly met
a growing demand in a society in which language became a resource for social distinc-
tion. This is reflected in a shift of emphasis: whereas Early Modern grammars did
not endorse specific usages, grammars of the late-18th and 19th centuries took pains
to identify the “proper” forms and condemn “improper” usages (cf. Nevalainen
2003: 142–146). It is at this stage that the goal of “minimal variation in form” in the
structure of the language is most actively pursued, and where the standard ideology
comes to the fore in the grammar writers’ justifications for proscribing their choices.
Their pronouncements on usage changed markedly in this period: in the 19th century,
the Victorian obsession with morality was transferred to language use, and “incorrect”
language becomes “morally reprehensible. Those who speak in this way are committing
offences against the integrity of the language” (Milroy 2000: 16).
Pronunciation was the last level of linguistic organization to be subjected to stan-
dardization. The late 19th and early 20th century witnessed the selection and codifica-
tion of Received Pronunciation (RP), as set out in detail in Mugglestone (2003; also
Volume 2, Chapter 121). Nevalainen (2003: 148) suggests that pronunciation could
1004 VII Standardization

only be successfully codified when the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) became
available. However, Milroy’s functional explanation seems to be more in line with the
internal dynamics of standardization processes: “[…] standardization is implemented
and promoted primarily through written forms of language. It is in this channel that uni-
formity of structure is most obviously functional. In spoken language, uniformity is in
certain respects dysfunctional, mainly in the sense that it inhibits the functional use
of stylistic variation” (Milroy 2000: 14). (See further Auer, Chapter 58.)

3 Summary
The preceding discussion has shown that “there is no single ancestor for Standard
English, be it a single dialect, a single text type, a single place, or a single point in
time. Standard English has gradually emerged over the centuries, and the rise of the ide-
ology of the standard arose only when many of its linguistic features were already in
place” (Wright 2000: 5–6). If we look at the current state of the art in English historical
linguistics, then the standard ideology is clearly losing its grip. For one thing, editorial
practices have changed considerably: it is now hardly acceptable to artificially create uni-
formity by normalizing variants when editing a manuscript. Similarly, one of the monu-
ments of late 19th century scholarship, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is now
committed to broadening its database: the third edition aims to overcome the original
edition’s “Britocentricity” (http://www.oed.com/public/update0903/march-2009-update;
last accessed 13 September 2011) and will be based on a much more diversified body
of texts, not only for Present-day English, but also for earlier periods of English (cf.
“Documentation” http://www.oed.com/public/oed3preface/preface-to-the-third-edition-
of-the-oed; last accessed 13 September 2011). Further, research in historical linguistics
is increasingly turning to varieties of English that have hitherto been neglected or alto-
gether excluded from consideration, and new sources are being tapped for a more inte-
grated approach to the history of English. Meanwhile, the English language continues to
change, and it will be highly instructive to see how and when such changes eventually
become part of the standard.

4 References
Benskin, Michael. 2004. Chancery Standard. In: Christian Kay, Carole Hough, and Irene Wother-
spoon (eds.), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Selected Papers from 12
ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Vol. II: Lexis and Transmission, 1–40. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1971. System, Norm und “Rede”. In: Sprache: Strukturen und Funktionen. XII
Aufsätze zur allgemeinen und Romanischen Sprachwissenschaft, 53–72. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Deumert, Ana and Wim Vandenbussche. 2003. Standard languages: Taxonomies and histories. In:
Deumert and Vandenbussche (eds.), 1–14.
Deumert, Ana and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.). 2003. Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Fisher, John H., Malcolm Richardson, and Janet L. Fisher (eds.). 1984. An Anthology of Chancery
English. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Fisher, John H. 1996. The Emergence of Standard English. Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky.
Fishman, Joshua A. 2008. Rethinking the Ausbau-Abstand dichotomy into a continuous and
multivariate system. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191: 17–26.
62 Standardization: Standards in the history of English 1005

Geeraerts, Dirk. 2003. Cultural models of linguistic standardization. In: René Dirven, Ro-
slyn Frank, and Martin Pütz (eds.), Cognitive Models in Language and Thought. Ideology,
Metaphors and Meanings, 25–68. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gneuss, Helmut. 1972. The origin of standard Old English and Æthelwold’s school at Winchester.
Anglo-Saxon England 1: 63–83.
Gretsch, Mechthild. 2006. A key to Ælfric’s standard Old English. Leeds Studies in English 37:
161–177.
Haugen, Einar. 1966. Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist 68: 922–935.
Haugen, Einar. 1972. The Scandinavian languages as cultural artifacts. In: Anwar S. Dil (ed.), The
Ecology of Language. Essays by Einar Haugen, 265–286. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hogg, Richard. 2006. Old English dialectology. In: Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.),
The Handbook of the History of English, 395–416. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell.
Johnston, Andrew James and Claudia Lange. 2006. The beginnings of standardization – an
epilogue. In: Schaefer (ed.), 183–200.
Kloss, Heinz. 1967. Abstand-languages and Ausbau-languages. Anthropological Linguistics 9:
29–41.
Kloss, Heinz. 1978. Die Entwicklung neuer Germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800. 2nd rev. edn.
Düsseldorf: Schwann.
Koch, Peter. 1988. Norm und Sprache. In: Harald Thun (ed.), Energeia und Ergon: Sprachliche
Variation – Sprachgeschichte – Sprachtypologie. Band II: Das sprachtheoretische Denken Euge-
nio Coserius in der Diskussion, 327–354. Tübingen: Narr.
Kornexl, Lucia. 2000. “Concordes equali consuetudinis usu” – monastische Normierungsbetrebun-
gen und sprachliche Standardisierung in spätaltenglischer Zeit. In: Doris Ruhe and Karl-
Heinz Spieß (eds.), Prozesse der Normbildung und Normveränderung im mittelalterlichen
Europa, 237–273. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Laing, Margaret and Roger Lass. 2007. LAEME: A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English,
1150–1325. University of Edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html
Liuzza, Roy. 2000. Scribal habit: The evidence of the Old English gospels. In: Mary Swan and
Elaine M. Treharne (eds.), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, 143–165. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
McIntosh, Angus, Michael L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin. 1986. LALME: A Linguistic Atlas of
Late Mediaeval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Mesthrie, Rajend. 2006. World Englishes and the multilingual history of English. World Englishes
25(3–4): 381–390.
Milroy, James. 2000. Historical description and the ideology of the standard language. In: Wright
(ed.), 11–28.
Milroy, James. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 5(4): 530–555.
Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 1991. Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescrip-
tion and Standardisation. 2nd edn. London/New York: Routledge.
Mugglestone, Lynda. 2003. “Talking Proper”: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Nevalainen, Terttu. 2003. English. In: Deumert and Vandenbussche (eds.), 127–156.
Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. Fourteenth-century English in a diachronic perspective. In: Schaefer
(ed.), 117–132.
Nevalainen, Terttu and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. 2006. Standardisation. In: Richard Hogg
and David Denison (eds.), A History of the English Language, 271–310. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Samuels, M. H. 1963. Some applications of Middle English Dialectology. English Studies 44: 81–94.
Schaefer, Ursula. 2006. The beginnings of standardization: The communicative space in
fourteenth-century England. In: Schaefer (ed.), 3–24.