Year: 2018
Type: book-review
Abstract: The Oxford History of English is a handsome, finely presented volume running to nearly 500 pages, including a general introduction, fourteen thematic chapters, some forty pages of bibliographical references and a well-compiled index.Additionally the book contains a key to phonetic symbols, an IPA Mouth Diagram (that is, the standard parallelogram representing the positions of articulation for the vowels) and a full chronology of English, combining socio-political, historical and linguistic landmarks. 2Mugglestone's introduction opens with the following quote: "How can there be a true History, when we see no Man living is able to write truly the History of the last Week?" 1 This sets the tone for The Oxford History of English which aims at "the construction of 'a history' rather than 'the history', recognizing that many [...] pathways could be navigated through the past-and present-of the English language" (2).The emphasis throughout is placed on the heterogeneity of English and on the nature of the transitions which have marked its history.In this respect The Oxford History of English is very different from many standard histories of the language which tend, Mugglestone suggests, a) to focus on one variety of English (marginalising or trivialising others in the process) and b) to caricature the transitional nature of historical change with a series of sudden passages from one stage to the next.The Oxford History of English is therefore to some degree a counter-history of English, a corrective to what it sees as an excessive oversimplification in the field.It aims nonetheless to provide "an accessible
Source: Lexis
DOI: 10.4000/lexis.1895
Author: Graham Ranger
Institution: Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4241626713