Communities of Practice in the History of English.

Languages change and they keep changing as a result of communicative interactions and practices in the context of communities of language users. This book includes articles that showcases a range of such communities and their practices as loci of language change in the history of English. P&BNS 235 Communities of Practice in the History of English 2 Editorial page 3 Title page 4 LCC data 5 Table of contents 6 Preface 8 Communities of practice as a locus of language change 10 1. Introduction 10 2. Community frameworks in (historical) linguistics 11 3. Communities of practice in historical linguistics 15 4. Chapter overview 17 4.1 Letter writers 19 4.2 Scribes and printers 20 4.3 Professionals 21 Notes 23 References 24 I. Letter writers 26 The role of communities of practice in the emergence of Scottish Standard English 28 1. Introduction 28 2. The prestige language in eighteenth century Scotland 29 3. The Select Society of Edinburgh 30 4. The lists of Scotticisms 32 5. Lord Fife and his factors 34 6. The Fife-Rose Corpus 36 7. Fife’s background 37 8. Scotticisms in the Fife-Rose Corpus 39 9. Topic-driven use of Scotticisms 40 10. Fife’s bilingualism 44 11. Fife’s pragmatic use of Scots 46 12. Fife’s language and the emergence of Scottish Standard English 48 Notes 51 References 51 Mixing genres and reinforcing community ties in nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence 56 1. Introduction and corpus description 56 1.1 Register and dialect in personal letters 58 2. Religious references in familiar letters 59 2.1 Crystallized expressions in opening and closing formulae 59 2.2 Religious references in the body of the letter 60 3. Religious references in business letters 65 4. Concluding remarks 66 Notes 67 References 67 Appendix 68 Communities of practice, idiolects, and community grammar 70 1. Introductory remarks 70 2. Corpus structure 71 3. Background information 74 4. Results and discussion 77 4.1 Distribution of was and were as dependent on subject type 77 4.2 Communities of practice, individual and community grammar(s) 80 5. Community grammar and conclusions 87 Acknowledgements 88 Notes 88 References 90 Community or communities of practice? 1820 petitioners in the Cape Colony 92 1. Introduction 92 1.1 Data 94 1.2 Outline 94 2. Mr. John Bold’s written requests 95 3. Petitioning as an everyday practice 97 3.1 Genre 98 3.2 Genre shifts and self-presentation 99 4. Community of practice 100 4.1 Periphery and core: experts and learners 100 4.2 Two communities? 106 5. Conclusions 107 Acknowledgements 109 Notes 109 References 109 II. Scribes and printers 112 Crafting text languages: Spelling systems in manuscripts of the "Man of Law’s Tale" 114 1. Setting the scene: The community of book artisans in medieval London 114 2. Community within a community: Middle English scribes 115 3. Communio scriptorum as a community of practice 116 4. Individuality in community: Scribal responses to exemplar copies 117 5. The community of the “Man of Law’s Tale” scribes 118 6. Negotiating the meaning of the littera: Potestatic representations in MLT MSS 119 6.1 Litterae representing potestas /ʃ/ 120 6.2 Litterae representing potestas /x/ 123 7. What’s in a symbol? Abbreviations in the MLT MSS 124 7.1 Superscript ‘i’ 125 7.2 Brevigraph 126 8. Conclusion: Crafting text languages as a means of establishing community of practice 127 Acknowledgements 128 Notes 128 References 129 Typographical and graphomorphemic features of five editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes 132 1. Introduction 132 2. Community of practice: Theoretical assumptions 133 3. Early modern printers as a community of practice 134 4. The Kalender of Shepherdes: Printers’ joint enterprise and shared repertoire 136 4.1 Collaborative relationships among the printers 136 4.2 Typographical features in the KS editions as part of printers’ shared repertoire of resources 138 4.3 Abbreviations as printers’ typographical tool for line justification 140 5. Conclusions 151 Acknowledgements 151 Notes 152 References 153 Appendix 155 Printing houses as communities of practice: Orthography in early modern medical books 160 1. Introduction 160 2. Background: Communities of practice 162 2.1 Early modern medical writers 162 2.2 Early modern printers 163 3. Orthographic standardization and printing 165 4. Data 167 4.1 Spelling and annotation in EMEMT 168 4.2 VARDing 169 5. Findings 171 5.1 Pre-standard spellings 171 5.2 Brevigraphs and macrons 174 6. Conclusions 178 Acknowledgements 179 Notes 180 References 182 Elizabeth Montagu’s Shakespeare essay (1769): The final draft and the first edition 186 1. Introduction 186 2. Two communities of practice 188 2.1 Elizabeth Montagu and the essay 188 2.2 The first edition and printing house practices 190 3. The draft of the essay 193 4. Linguistic variation between the draft and the edition 196 4.1 Spelling 198 4.2 Punctuation 200 4.3 Capitalization 200 5. Conclusion 202 Acknowledgements 203 Notes 203 References 204 III. Professionals 208 Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: Bilingual communities of practice in Anglo-Saxon England 210 1. Introduction 210 2. Dictionary evidence and previous research 214 3. Corpus evidence 215 3.1 Anglo-Latin 215 3.2 Old English 220 4. Conclusions and suggestions 226 Notes 227 References 229 Appendix 1 232 How a community of practice creates text community: Middle Scots legal and administrative discourse 234 1. Setting the context 234 2. Notaries and clerks as a community of practice 235 3. Tracing fixed patterns in Middle Scots legal and administrative texts 238 4. Medieval Scottish burghs as text communities 240 5. Accessing the text community through lexical bundles 241 5.1 The authorities and the community 242 5.2 Collective reference 245 5.3 Heirs and will executors 248 5.4 Named individuals 249 5.5 Other individuals 252 6. Conclusions 255 Notes 256 References 257 Early Modern English community of medical practitioners 260 1. Introduction 260 2. Communities of Practice as a framework for historical research 262 3. Communities of Practice and their written legacy 263 4. The theory of four humors by Galen 264 5. Corpus linguistic analysis of the language of physicians and surgeons 265 6. Conclusions 274 Acknowledgements 275 Notes 276 References 276 The formation of the Royal Society as a community of practice and discourse 278 1. Introduction 278 2. The Royal Society as a community of practice 279 2.1 Composition 280 2.2 Network 282 3. The Royal Society as a community of discourse 283 3.1 Linguistic conventions 284 3.2 Stylistic conventions 285 3.3 Generic conventions 290 4. Conclusions 291 Notes 292 References 293 Index of names 296 Index of subjects 298 Languages change and they keep changing as a result of communicative interactions and practices in the context of communities of language users. The articles in this volume showcase a range of such communities and their practices as loci of language change in the history of English. The notion of communities of practice takes its starting point in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and refers to groups of people defined both through their membership in a community and through their shared practices. Three types of communities are particularly highlighted: networks of letter writers; groups of scribes and printers; and other groups of professionals, in particular administrators and scientists. In these diverse contexts in England, Scotland, the United States and South Africa, language change is not seen as an abstract process but as a response to the communicative needs and practices of groups of people engaged in interaction.