Eighteenth-Century English

Raymond Hickey is Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Essen University, Germany. His recent publications include Legacies of Colonial English: Studies of Transported Dialects (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

'Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change represents another significant contribution to English historical linguistics in the Studies in English Language series … under the supervision of Merja Kytö. The volume, edited by Raymond Hickey, contains sixteen essays by leading scholars whose main research interests include the development of English in the Late Modern period. The book therefore serves as a useful companion to its predecessor on the nineteenth century, Nineteenth-Century English: Stability and Change (2006) … I am confident that the studies in this volume will encourage further investigation into this prolific, yet somewhat neglected, period of the history of the English language.' María José López-Couso, English Language and Linguistics

• 1. Attitudes and concerns in eighteenth-century English Raymond Hickey; 2. Prescriptivism and the suppression of variation Joan Beal; 3. Women's grammars Carol Percy; 4. Eighteenth-century women and their norms of correctness Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade; 5. Lowth as an icon of prescriptivism Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade; 6. Queeney Thrale and the teaching of English grammar Karlijn Navest; 7. Coalitions, networks, and discourse communities in Augustan England: The Spectator and the early eighteenth-century essay Susan Fitzmaurice; 8. Contextualizing eighteenth-century politeness: social distinction and metaphorical levelling Terttu Nevalainen and Heli Tissari; 9. Expressive speech acts and politeness in eighteenth-century English Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker; 10. Variation and change in eighteenth-century English Richard W. Bailey; 11. Variation in sentential complements in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English: a processing-based explanation Teresa Fanego; 12. Nationality and standardisation in eighteenth-century Scotland Charles Jones; 13. English in eighteenth-century Ireland Raymond Hickey; 14. Changes and continuities in dialect grammar Bernd Kortmann and Susanne Wagner; 15. 'Be pleased to report expressly': the development of a public style in late modern English business and official correspondence Marina Dossena; 16. Registering the language - dictionaries, diction and the art of elocution Lynda Mugglestone.