From Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin & Anita Auer [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 7]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Samuli Kaislaniemi, *Mel Evans, Teo Juvonen & Anni Sairio
University of Helsinki, *University of Leicester
Traditional accounts of the history of English spelling are primarily based on printed texts. The narrative they tell is generally accepted: English orthography developed from great diversity in Late Middle English to something very close to modern standard spelling by 1800. But investigations into English historical spelling have also revealed a split between public and private spelling practices, the details and diachronic development of which remain hidden. We have precious little knowledge of the role social factors, such as gender and social rank of the writer, play in the development of spelling standardisation in English.
This paper sets out to chart the history of epistolary spelling in Early Modern English using the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Although the suitability of edition-based historical corpora for orthographical queries has been justly questioned, we counter potential editorial interference by two methods. First, we focus on frequent variables; and second, we use smaller, manuscript-based resources to verify our findings. The results reveal, for the first time, long-term trends in the history of English private spelling.