Social Hierarchy and Sociolinguistics Guiding Principles

Chapter 10 builds on the sociohistorical framework introduced in Chapter 1 and examines the related sociolinguistic effects of the Great Chain of Being. The first objective of Chapters 10 through 12 is to investigate how non-standard varieties of English were transmitted orally from generation to generation in largely illiterate rural communities in England, up to the beginning of the colonial period. This approach aligns with the bottom-up methodology outlined in Chapters 1 and 15. Considering that most settlers who arrived in North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had deep agricultural roots and had spent most of their lives in their home parishes in Great Britain, this discussion is crucial for understanding how their fragmented English dialectal varieties evolved in a New World setting. In particular, I propose a theoretical model to explain why the most conservative and peripheral dialect features never took root in North America, and why, compared to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Great Britain, a relatively leveled form of English came to be spoken across all social classes. After presenting the relevant sociolinguistic concepts underpinning this study, the chapter traces the sociolinguistic history of English from Norman times to the end of the eighteenth century. It concludes with a discussion of the survival of linguistic relics in modern dialects, particularly in Great Britain. The persistence of many of these older features is often neglected or underestimated, particularly by theoretical linguists (cf. Ossi Ihalainen, 1994). This dialectal data will be fully exploited in Part III.