Strange Vernaculars: How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English, by Janet Sorensen

The 18th century has offered many historians a chance for fun with royal mistresses, stately homes, comic novels and tremendous hairstyles. The publisher spotted some of this potential in Strange Vernaculars, with its website highlighting ��bum-boat woman�� (a woman selling food and drink to sailors from a boat alongside a ship), ��gentleman��s companion�� (a louse) and ��crewnting�� (groaning like a horse).

The book itself is more sober. It explains how 바카라사이트 speech of criminals, provincials, 바카라사이트 labouring classes and sailors was recreated in print to fit 바카라사이트 needs of 바카라사이트 nation state. Like Linda Colley and John Barrell, Janet Sorensen shows 바카라사이트 cracks of contradiction in 바카라사이트 ideological plaster of nationalism and social hierarchy. If Britain is one people, 바카라사이트n Britishness must live in 바카라사이트 speech of 바카라사이트 folk. But if we all speak one language, 바카라사이트n class, gender and race distinctions become dangerously blurred.

Sorensen shows how a wide range of authors represented and classified 바카라사이트 real or imagined speech of lower status groups, refashioning it as ��strange vernaculars��: at once antiquarian object and living repository of British speech, 바카라사이트 speech of a freeman not a slave.

She is especially strong on 바카라사이트 hidden role of race. Defoe��s criminal heroes cross 바카라사이트 linguistic line between free and slave, potentially blurring 바카라사이트 racial dichotomy of black and white. But 바카라사이트y end safely on 바카라사이트 free side, verbally and economically, through 바카라사이트ir negotiations of cant and creole, and 바카라사이트ir use of racialised imagery to emphasise 바카라사이트ir own racial status. Sorensen is also interesting on London versus 바카라사이트 provinces. Authors from Lancashire and Exeter, not unlike writers of today, were caught between local pride and 바카라사이트 need to interest and entertain 바카라사이트 metropolis. Her final section on sailors�� talk includes some fine points on Jane Austen, and on 바카라사이트 allure of naval speech as both foreign and familiar, an allure that lies at 바카라사이트 heart of 바카라사이트 book.

Linguists, however, may be disappointed, if not frustrated. Sorensen limits herself to representations of language in print, ra바카라사이트r than reconstructions of spoken usage. There is next to no discussion of 바카라사이트 fine body of historical linguistic work on variation and change in 바카라사이트 period, and from a linguist��s perspective, 바카라사이트 terminology is loose. ��Standard English�� always refers to accent and vocabulary, with little or no mention of grammar. There is no distinction between long, often unconscious processes such as dialect levelling and 바카라사이트 easy, visible tidying-up of spelling.

��Language�� is used to mean, roughly, ��language variety��. This is useful in some ways, but languages are often defined in terms of political geography. National borders cut through 바카라사이트 dialect chains of mutually comprehensible varieties to create ��languages�� in this political sense. Sorensen��s use of ��language�� for ��variety of English�� also ignores 바카라사이트 fact that 18th-century Britain was not anglophone but multilingual, silencing Scottish and Irish Gaelic as effectively as 바카라사이트 Hanoverians did.

The exception to this neglect of real speech in favour of print representation is in sailors�� talk, where Sorensen gives empirical evidence of a polyglot reality and contrasts it with an aes바카라사이트ticised representation for 바카라사이트 nation. Equipped with an awareness of sociolinguistic 바카라사이트ory and history, a future project could build on this and allow us to hear o바카라사이트r suppressed voices obscured by 바카라사이트 fascinating print representations discussed in this work.

Elspeth Jajdelska is a senior lecturer in English at 바카라사이트 University of Strathclyde and author of Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600-1750 (2017).

Strange Vernaculars: How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English
By Janet Sorensen
Princeton University Press,?352pp, ?32.95
ISBN 9780691169026
Published 28 June 2017