The Emergence of Standard English

John H. Fisher

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813108520, 9780813119359
• eBook ISBN: 9780813187365
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Language scholars have traditionally agreed that the development of the English language was largely unplanned. John H. Fisher challenges this view, demonstrating that the standardization of writing and pronunciation was, and still is, made under the control of political and intellectual forces.

In these essays Fisher chronicles his gradual realization that Standard English was not a popular evolution at all but was the direct result of political decisions made by the Lancastrian administrations of Henry IV and Henry V. To achieve standardization and acceptance of the vernacular, these kings turned to their Chancery scribes, who were responsible for writing and copying legal and royal documents.

Chaucer, a relative of the king, began to be labeled by the government as a master of the language, and it was Henry V who inspired the fifteenth-century tradition of citing Chaucer as the "maker" of English. An even more important link between language development and government practice is the fact that Chaucer himself composed in the English of the Chancery scribes.

Fisher discusses the development of Chancery practices, royal involvement in promoting use of the vernacular, Chaucer's use of English, Caxton's use of Chancery Standard, and the nineteenth-century phenomenon of a standard, or "received," pronunciation of English. This engaging and clearly written work will change the way scholars understand the development of English and think about the intentional shaping of our language.

VIII

CAXTON AND CHANCERY ENGLISH

In the previous essays I have discussed the part played by the English civil service in helping to create and disseminate a standard written English in the fifteenth century. Before Henry V, official writing in England was in Latin and French. Writing in English, always unofficial and intended for local audiences, was essentially the phonetic transcription of regional dialects. The characteristic that sets a standard language apart from a dialect is the degree of its uniformity throughout a society, and this uniformity is more nearly achieved in written than in spoken language. M.L. Samuels has indicated that the first movement toward the creation of an English written standard can be found in the sermons and tracts by Wycliffe and his followers in the North Midlands in the last quarter of the fourteenth century.¹ This Wycliffite standard was spread throughout England by the Lollard preachers. Eventually it came to be used for secular works, and this standard continued to appear throughout the fifteenth century.

Concurrently with the Wycliffite writers, the government and merchant classes in London began to turn to English. Their writings are not as uniform as the Wycliffite. The language of the court poetry and of the texts printed by Chambers and Daunt reveals no metropolitan standard but is rather a bundle of related dialects reflecting in different ratios the southern substratum of London speech and the overlays of midland and western dialects imposed by immigrant clerks.²

An official written standard came into existence in August 1417 when Henry V embarked upon his second invasion of France. Until that time, all of his correspondence had been in Latin and French, but from August 1417 until his death in August 1422 Henry communicated in English with the officers of his government, the London municipal corporation and other municipalities, guilds, abbeys, individuals, and institutions. Although written by more than a dozen different scribes, his Signet letters are remarkably uniform in style and language, without any trace of regional dialect and with orthography and syntax that point the way toward Modern English. Two extant holograph letters indicate that this Signet usage was based on Henry’s personal style. As Malcolm Richardson has shown,³ the English of Henry’s Signet letters served as the model for the English of documents written in the other offices of government, which together were designated as “Chancery.” Although few in number and diverse in style before 1422, from 1422 onward documents in English in the files of the privy seal, Chancery, and parliament increase in number and by 1430 had evolved the fairly standard forms and expression that M.L. Samuels designated “Chancery Standard.” Malcolm Richardson, Jane Fisher, and I have prepared an anthology of the 103 original Signet letters of Henry V and 138 other documents from the privy seal and Chancery collections in the Public Record Office in London illustrating the evolution of Chancery Standard to 1455. This essay will make some comparisons between Caxton’s language and the language of these Chancery documents.

The spread of Chancery Standard outside of government is only now beginning to be explored. Its influence is acknowledged in the statement of 1422 quoted in the second essay, explaining why the Brewer’s Guild changed its recordkeeping from Latin and French to English.⁴ The original of this statement, by William Porland, clerk of the Brewers’ Guild, is in Latin; the translation is from the Brewers’ abstract book. The passage nicely illustrates the complementary roles of Signet and Chancery. “Letters missive” are th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• I. Introduction
• II. A Language Policy for Lancastrian England
• III. Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English
• IV. European Chancelleries and the Rise of Standard Languages
• V. Animadversions on the Text of Chaucer
• VI. Chaucer’s French: A Metalinguistic Inquiry
• VII. Piers Plowman and Chancery Tradition
• VIII. Caxton and Chancery English
• IX. The History of Received Pronunciation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index