transitional areas and social history in middle english dialectology: the case of lincolnshire

Transitional Areas and Social History in MiddleEnglish Dialectology: The Case of Lincolnshire

Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre ÆMaria Dolores Perez-Raja

Published online: 27 March 2008

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract Medieval Lincolnshire is an interesting area in linguistic terms, not only

because the boundary between the Northern and East Midland dialects in ME possibly

ran horizontally across the shire, but also because historical dialectologists have

proposed that some linguistic features could have diffused into it from the south, the

west and the north. In this paper, we intend to reconstruct some socio-historical aspects

of late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman Lincolnshire (c.900–c.1250) which could have

contributed to this linguistic panorama in ME. Not disregarding the proposal that

patterns of Danish settlement and contact between OE and ON could have affected the

diffusion of innovations throughout this shire, attention will be given to other aspects

of the process: (a) the characteristics of the medieval landscape which, by hindering or

favouring communication, may have conditioned the distribution of language

variants; (b) aspects of early political history and their possible linguistic sequels; and,

mainly, (c) the specific socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the area

which could have favoured the spread of linguistic features by promoting the

concentration of people in urban settlements as well as the mobility of speakers and, in

general, the loosening of some close-knit networks of interpersonal relations and the

establishment of weaker ties between individuals.

Keywords Middle English � Historical dialectology � Social history �Historical sociolinguistics � Lincolnshire

J. C. Conde-Silvestre (&) � M. D. Perez-Raja

Departamento de Filogıa Inglesa, Facultad de Letras, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia 30071, Spain

e-mail: [email protected]

M. D. Perez-Raja

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Neophilologus (2008) 92:713–727

DOI 10.1007/s11061-008-9106-z

Introduction: Land and Language in Medieval Lincolnshire

This paper will focus on some linguistic characteristics attested in the county of

Lincolnshire during the Middle English period (ME), with the final aim of establishing

some connection with aspects of socio-economic history within a macro-sociolinguistic

framework. In broad, dialectological terms:

(a) Lincolnshire was horizontally traversed by some of the isoglosses which

historical dialectologists have traditionally believed to separate the ME

northern from the east-midland dialects (see Orton 1929; Ekwall 1938); and

(b) the county was open to the linguistic influence from neighbouring zones:

Lincolnshire was clearly receptive to innovations diffusing from the south and

west, as well as, despite some initial resistance, from the north, in apparent

contradiction with the precise separation of two distinctive ME areas

mentioned in (a).

Some historical dialectologists have attempted to explain these traits either as

resulting from the effects of the landscape or as the result of historical events in the

early Anglo-Saxon period. Figure 1 shows a clear division of the county into

northern and southern areas. In the north, the former Anglo-Saxon province of

Lindsey had enjoyed intermittent periods of Northumbrian control, submitted, as it

was, to the overlordship of Edwin in the early seventh century, and independence,

particularly after a bishopric uncontrolled by York was established by Archbishop

Theodore later in the century (Stenton 1971, p. 48; Sawyer 1998, pp. 45, 84).

Fig. 1 Medieval Lincolnshire (Kristensson 1967, p. 267)

714 J. C. Conde-Silvestre, M. D. Perez-Raja

123

Physically, Lindsey bordered on the Humber estuary and the North Sea, respectively

to the north and east, while westwards it faded into the marshes of the Trent.

Southwards, the river Witham separated Lindsey from another area, which in the

seventh and eighth centuries had been part of Middle Anglian territory under the

overlordship of the Mercian kings. The river boundary ran eastwards into the coastal

fenlands near the Wash. The districts in this southern part were given the names of

Kesteven and Holland in the late eleventh century: the former in the south-west,

while the latter extended into the south-east over the marshy stretch of land across

the Wash (Stenton 1971, p. 49; May 1976, pp. 12–14; Bennet and Bennet 1993;

Sawyer 1998, pp. 12–18).

A number of ME linguistic features seem to correlate clearly with these physical

and historical circumstances. One diagnostic feature, in this respect, is the

distribution of OE [a:], whether the vowel was retained—and later fronted to

[æ:] [ [e:]—or velarized and rounded into [O:]. In fact, historical linguists have

established that the continuity of OE [a:] in words like brad ‘broad’, ac ‘oak’ or stan‘stone’ was a characteristic of ME northern dialects, while the extension of [O:] in

brod, oc or stoon was an innovation diffusing from neighbouring counties in the

south and west (Luick 1921, p. 36; Jordan 1925, p. 50; Mosse 1945, pp. 20–22;

Brook 1963, p. 63; Milroy 1992a, p. 171; Fernandez 1993, p. 593; Fernandez Cuesta

and Rodrıguez Ledesma 2001, p. 459). The distribution in Lincolnshire of the

residual [a:] and the innovating [O:] generally agrees with the physical boundaries

and the historical conditions mentioned above. On the evidence of the place-names

and surnames from the Lay Subsidy Rolls for the period 1290–1350, Kristensson

(1967, p. 283) reconstructed the distribution reflected in Fig. 2, where OE [a:] is

clearly disseminated all over Lindsey, while Kesteven and Holland were proper [O:]

areas in the thirteenth century, if not earlier on account of the conservative nature of

the onomastic materials.

Other ME features with the same geographical distribution are (see Kristensson

1967, 1998; Bennett 1970; McIntosh 1976 [1989]; Dietz 1989):

(a) the reflexes of OE\eah[, which after monophthongization into [e:] could

have been raised to [i:] in the thirteenth century in the southern part of the

county, where the names Slych or Slyman are attested (1967, p. 169);

(b) the loss of the spirant in the cluster \ht[ as in Houton (\Houghton) or

Utrede (\Uhtred), also restricted to Kesteven–Holland (1967, pp. 216–217).

Nevertheless, there is also linguistic evidence which challenges this observation.

In fact, Kristensson contradicts his own emphatic remarks that the river Witham was

‘‘a definite boundary-line between �a and �o districts’’ and that Lindsey remained

isolated ‘‘before the fens on the Witham were drained’’ (1967, p. 31) when he claims

that instances of ME long (\OE lang) had cropped up north of Lincoln, within the

Lindsey area, opening a breach in the original distribution (see Fig. 3). Interestingly,

he suggests that long forms might have diffused northwards from Lincoln, the

ecclesiastical and commercial centre at the junction of the Roman Ermine Street.

Kristensson also assumes that this route—which was part of the royal network of

communications in the twelveth century—connected Kesteven and Lindsey and

ME Dialectology: Lincolnshire 715

123

favoured the inflitration of these forms ‘‘making the area contiguous to the �o area to

the west and south’’ (1967, p. 242).

Moreover, the materials included in the Linguistic Atlas of Late MediaevalEnglish (LALME) (McIntosh et al. 1986, Vol. 1, p. 464) for the period 1350–1430

show that the innovative pronunciation [O:] had already reached most of Lindsey, up

to the Humber estuary, by the mid fourteenth century. If we assume that the place-

names studied by Kristensson, on account of their inherent conservatism, may point

to distributions prior to the mid-thirteenth century, then correlating this evidence

with the maps from LALME would yield a pattern of diffusion which, disregarding

physical barriers, extends chronologically from early to late ME and spatially from

the south to the north of this shire.

A second linguistic peculiarity of medieval Lincolnshire was its receptivity,

despite some initial resistance, to some changes diffusing from the north. That

Lincolnshire resisted at first the diffusion of northern innovations in early ME

should not be unexpected, in so far as the area was clearly open to southern and

midland influence. Kristensson, for instance, had proposed that Lindsey, like

Yorkshire, was reluctant to adopt the fronting of OE [o:] in god ‘good’, mor ‘moor’

or stod ‘stood’, which could have already been pronounced as [y:] in thirteenth-

century Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham, if not earlier, on account of the

Fig. 2 Distribution of ME [a:] and [O:] in the northern counties and Lincolnshire (Kristensson 1967,p. 283)


123

conservative nature of his evidence (1967, pp. 92–93). However, the evidence from

LALME shows that in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the new

pronunciation [y:] had already extended over most parts of western Lindsey

(including Lincoln) and northern Kesteven, although it does not seem to have

reached the rest of Kesteven and Holland.

This is reflected in the distribution of the different spellings for good in Fig. 4,

with the forms gud, gude, guyd or goyd covering Lindsey and northern Kesteven,

while gode, goode or god are dominant in southern Kesteven and Holland. Evidence

from the early sixteenth century points to the final extension of the northern

innovation into this area as well: in describing the terms of a dispute between the

inhabitants of Frieston and Fishtoft, two localities situated respectively east and

south of Boston, the Churchwarden’s Account of Leverton (1552) shows the

spellings buke for ‘book’ and plugh for ‘plough’.

Lincolnshire as a Transitional Area: A Historical Sociolinguistic Approach

It seems, therefore, that throughout ME Lincolnshire showed an apparently

contradictory behaviour, in so far as it received linguistic innovations that had

Fig. 3 Distribution of ME reflexes of OE lang in the northern counties and Lincolnshire (Kristensson1967, p. 273)


123

Fig. 4 Distribution of forms for GOOD in LALME for Lincolnshire and adjacent areas (McIntosh et al.1986, Vol. 4, p. 281)


123

probably originated both in the North and the East Midlands. It also appears that

neither the physical characteristics of the landscape, nor the early existence in different

territories of distinctive Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, help make sense of it. In modern

dialectological terms this could be a clue that Lincolnshire was a ‘transitional’ zone, so

that features from surrounding focal areas—like the above-mentioned—extended over

most parts of the shire in the course of time. Our purpose now is to deal with some other

reasons that may help understand this situation, following the general proposal in

dialectology that transitional areas are relevant for a deeper understanding of variability

in language, and especially ‘‘for figuring out how speakers accommodate one another’’

(Chambers and Trudgill 1998, p. 142; see also: Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2003,

pp. 721–723). As such, our contribution touches on the field of Historical Sociolin-

guistics, in so far as we attempt to apply some of the tenets which have proved useful to

interpret contemporary situations of language variation and change to the elucidation of

linguistic variability in the past.1

One sociolinguistic construct which, in our opinion, could make sense of the

linguistic situation in medieval Lincolnshire is the social network hypothesis, as

applied by James and Lesley Milroy in the 1980s–1990s to the interpretation of

language variation and change. The authors assumed the sociological observation

that the structural properties of networks of interpersonal relationships—such as

density, multiplexity, reciprocity, etc.—may have some influence on the behaviour

of the individuals that participate in the networks affected, and, following

Granovetter’s theory of strong and weak ties (1973, 1982), they studied their

connection with the actuation and diffusion of linguistic change. As such, the

Milroys proposed that individuals receive some pressure to maintain the linguistic

variety that they normally use; this is exerted by the members of their own social

network: those related to them by kin, friendship, etc. This norm-enforcing pressure

is stronger when the ties between speakers are dense and multiplex and,

accordingly, the network is close-knit, with many strong ties: virtually everybody

knows everyone else in the group and their mutual relationship affects more than

one sphere (profession, family, friends, etc.). In contemporary western societies,

such situations are common at the highest and lowest layers and usually result in

resistance to innovations. There are, however, socially and geographically mobile

speakers falling in between. These individuals, who, by virtue of their social and

spatial mobility, may establish weak ties within loose-knit, uniplex networks,

are more exposed to linguistic innovations originating outside the group. The

1 On the methodology of historical sociolinguistics and some applications to material from late periods in

the history of English, see, among others, Romaine (1982, 1988), Milroy (1992b), Nevalainen and

Raumolin-Brunberg (1996, 2003) and Conde-Silvestre (2007). This methodology has also allowed some

historical linguists to speculate on the connection between general patterns of variability and change and

the socio-historical circumstances of particular linguistic areas in earlier periods, like Old English or

Middle English, when data on the profile of individual ‘informants’ hardly exists. In fact, some scholars

have been successful in combining diverse aspects of social history and the distribution of features, not

only from OE (Toon 1983, 1992a, b; Trousdale 2005; Hogg 2006) and ME (Smith 1992, 1996, pp. 89–94;

Leith 1998, pp. 31–44; Conde-Silvestre and Hernandez-Campoy 2002), but also from other languages:

ranging from the early romance varieties of Spain in the 10th–11th centuries (Wright 1989; Gimeno 1995;

Imhoff 2000; Penny 2000, pp. 40–49, 114–120; Moreno Fernandez 2005, pp. 75–124), to the

Scandinavian world in the 13th–14th (Jahr 1999) and medieval French (Ayres-Bennett 2001).


123

conclusion reached by James and Lesley Milroy is that loose-knit networks favour

the diffusion of innovations—they spread more easily and rapidly—and that the

weak ties between speakers provide the bridges for linguistic features to spread by

way of the peripheral members of the networks affected (Milroy and Milroy 1985,

pp. 363–366; Milroy 1987, p. 209; Milroy and Milroy 1992, pp. 5–10; see also

Bergs 2005, pp. 28–29).

In addition to applying this construct to tracing the diffusion of changes in

progress, especially in Belfast, James and Lesley Milroy have also proposed a

macro-sociolinguistic use of the concept, which may become suitable to historical

sociolinguistic research. In fact, in a supra-individual application, linguistic changes

will be slower or faster depending on some general characteristics of the populations:

they will diffuse slowly if the speech community is ‘‘well established and bound by

strong ties’’, whereas they are rapid ‘‘to the extent that weak ties exist’’ (Milroy and

Milroy 1985, p. 375). Following these proposals, some historical linguists have

considered the possible connection between historical socio-economic circumstances

and the slower or faster rate of diffusion of linguistic innovations in the past:

industrialization, urbanization, epidemics, internal wars, immigration and contact

with foreign communities are some of the factors that may have favoured the loosening

of close-knit networks and the increase of weak ties between speakers, which, both in

the present and in the past, are basic conditions for the diffusion of changes. This

direction of historical sociolinguistic research has been successfully applied to the

interpretation of several situations from the past, among others: (a) London in the early

Modern period as a repository and source of innovations in connection to demography,

socio-economic development and patterns of migration (Keene 2000; Nevalainen

2000; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2000, 2003, pp. 157–184; Conde-Silvestre

and Hernandez-Campoy 2004; Conde-Silvestre 2007, pp. 183–187); (b) the

displacement of people from the north of Spain and their settlement in medieval

Castile at the time of the Reconquest (9th–10th centuries) as a possible reason for the

spread of cultural and linguistic innovations (Penny 2000, pp. 63–67); or (c) the

general comparison between English and Icelandic in the context of their respective

history of contacts with other communities (Milroy and Milroy 1985).

In the final section of our paper we intend to review some demographic and

socio-economic circumstances whose concurrence in Lincolnshire during the

transition from OE to ME could have unchained the transformation of close

networks into looser ones and fostered the increase of weak ties between speakers,

thus becoming a likely explanation for the receptivity of the area to linguistic

innovations. Within this framework, three basic socio-economic conditions will be

analysed: (a) population merging and the formation of nucleated villages, (b)

migration and urbanization, and (c) social mobility.

Population Merging and the Formation of Nucleated Villages

It refers to the gradual but continuous desertion of dispersed farmsteds and hamlets,

well-documented in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, and to the subsequent

concentration of people into larger, nucleated villages with common fields. The


123

process was certainly favoured by the extension of cultivated land at the expense of

woodland and pasture, as well as by a steady demographic increase, and it must

have certainly favoured some displacement of population over short distances.

Nucleated villages were common in areas of former Scandinavian settlement, like

East Anglia and the East Midlands (Postan 1972, p. 34; Campbell 1990, p. 71; Dyer

2003, p. 19). Regarding Lincolnshire, Domesday Book records 21,000 people from

rural Lincolnshire who rendered services to the king’s tenants-in-chief and paid

taxes. They were probably the family men of households which may have consisted

of an average of five people each, so that the population of rural Lincolnshire can be

estimated at about 100,000 people, to which the inhabitants of towns (between

20,000 and 25,000, see below) must be added (see Darby 1977; Roffe 1992; Sawyer

1998, p. 28; Holt 2000, pp. 82–84). Notwithstanding the difficulty of drawing

reliable statistics, this pattern would not have changed drastically in the following

150 years. If these estimates are correct, Lincolnshire would have been one of the

most highly populated counties in the North and the East Midlands, with a density

of 30–40 per square mile, in contrast to the 20 people of Lancashire and the West

Riding of Yorkshire, and the much lower rate of 10 estimated for Northumberland,

Cumbria and Westmoreland further north (Wood 1987, p. 24).

Migration and Urbanization

Domesday Book also evinces that by 1086 almost 10% of the population lived in

towns (before 800 the percentage was 2%) (Miller and Hatcher 1978, p. 8; Unwin

1990; Astill 2000, pp. 38–46; Palliser 2000, pp. 17–24; Dyer 2003, pp. 62–63,

94–99). Between the early tenth and the late twelveth centuries, there were three

outstanding towns in Lincolnshire: Lincoln, Stamford and Boston (see Fig. 1).

Danish presence in the late nineth and tenth centuries must have stimulated the

economy of Lincoln. However, the main reason for the urban boost of Lincoln was

possibly its role as the main centre for royal government in the region: the

headquarters from which the earl and sheriff supervised the king’s business.

Evidence of prosperity is afforded by the importance of the Lincoln mint, one of the

most active, yielding an estimated 10% of England’s coins in the late tenth and early

eleventh centuries (Campbell et al. 1991, pp. 131, 204; Dyer 2000, p. 750).

Comparing the amounts that Lincoln rendered at the times of Edward the Confessor

(£30) and William the Conqueror (£100), as recorded in Domesday Book, also

confirms the evidence of prosperity (Roffe 2007, pp. 137–139). Political, social,

legal and economic errands must have attracted people—like the main landowners

or foreign merchants—who often became temporary inhabitants of the town (Hinton

2000, p. 228). In the mid-eleventh century, it is estimated that there were at least

1,270 tenements both within the walls and in the suburbs. Considering an average of

five people per tenement, a conservative estimate of nearly 6,500 by the time of

Domesday Book could be reasonable (Sawyer 1998, pp. 185–190). The movement

of population, in and out of the town—sometimes via the suburbial port of Torksey,

Lincoln’s access to the river Trent, which had 211 tenements and a population of

nearly 1,100—possibly favoured the loosening of network structures and the

extension of weaker ties in some networks of interpersonal relations, which,


123

according to modern sociolinguistic proposals, are the bridges for linguistic

innovations to diffuse. A compelling linguistic correlate of this situation could be

the diffusion of early ME long (\OE lang) over physical boundaries, probably, as

formerly explained, via the urban way of Lincoln and its hinterland (see Fig. 3).

Other important urban nuclei in twelveth century Lincolnshire, where a similar

situation could have held, were Stamford and Boston. The former was also a royal

borough in the late eleventh century and, if the estimation that it minted from 2.5 to

7% of coins in the period is reliable (Campbell et al. 1991, pp. 131, 204), then this

town must have also been a wealthy one: in fact, it was well-situated to serve as a

regional centre for local exchanges, but also for the collection and shipping of wool,

clothes and other products to different parts of England and abroad by way of the

North Sea. Domesday Book refers to over 400 tenements, which, applying the

above-mentioned rate, makes more than 2,000 inhabitants (Hinton 2000, pp.

228–229). The same document also records an increase of (£35 in the assessed value

that the town rendered between the times of Edward and William (from £15 to £50

respectively) (Roffe 2007, pp. 137–139). Finally, near the mouth of the Witham, the

port of Boston grew rapidly in the twelfth century to become another town of

relevance. Boston, open to the sea and linked to Lincoln by the navigable Witham,

enjoyed a privileged position and became one of the most important landing places

on the Lincolnshire coast, at least from the eleventh century, when Lincoln started

its expansion, and the demands of its products—particularly wool and cloth exports,

as well as salted meat, fish and cheese—began to grow, both overseas and in the

south of England (Sawyer 1998, pp. 197–198).

In general, the growth of towns must have attracted immigrants from other areas

and it is not unlikely that it contributed to increased mobility of English villagers:

from well-settled to the new colonized areas, from the countryside to the towns or to

villages where new land was available and markets were weekly celebrated, in

addition to the daily movements of people between neighbouring settlements. The

result—far from the mythologized idea prevailing in modern, industrialized

societies, that medieval communities were fairly stable (MacFarlane 1977,

p. 1)—is that ‘‘medieval villages were anything but closed communities’’ (Miller

and Hatcher 1978, p. 41; see also Holt 2000, pp. 102–103), and that mobility and a

loose affiliation with one’s village were much greater that is commonly assumed

(Bergs 2005, p. 48). Indeed, Lincolnshire must have been the rule rather than the

exception to this pattern.2

Social Mobility

The possibility that some members from the low layers of society had access to

portions of land between the late tenth and the twelfth centuries favoured a

2 In addition to the three larger towns of Lincoln, Stamford and Boston, Domesday Book records the

celebration of weekly markets in Louth, Partney and Threekingham. In the twelveth century there is

evidence that Sunday markets took place in Bardney, Bolingbroke, Burton upon Stather, Edenham, Fleet,

Sleaford, Spalding, Stamford, Wainfleet, Caistor and Grimsby. These localities must also be added to the

urban landscape of Lincolnshire, as poles that attracted people and contributed to disseminate inovations

and changes.


123

‘disintegration of the traditional manorial structures’, which many social historians

believe to have been specially prominent in the former Danelaw counties (Campbell

1990, pp. 78–81; Hadley 2000; Dyer 2003, pp. 38–39). Place-name evidence, for

instance, has been taken as a clue that slavery progressively disappeared in the

eleventh century. Reference to ‘settlements of freedmen’ in, for instance,

Laysingthorpe (Lincolnshire) and Lazenby (Yorkshire) may imply that members

of this rank came to engross the different groups of peasants, to the point that

Domesday Book, for instance records a varied typology. At one end of the

continuum there were the villeins, bordars (bordarius) and cottars (cotarius), that

still had close ties with lords and held land on demesne, over which a strict control

was exercised by owners. At the other end, there were the sokemen (sochemannus)

and free men (liberi homines) who, especially in the Danelaw, East Anglia and parts

of Kent, were free to go with their lands to whatever lord they wished—thus

maintaining their freedom and controlling their family properties (Roffe 2007,

pp. 153–155, 220). Even if it is doubtful that they could really have disposed of

portions of their land by gift, sale and exchange—as was formerly believed

(see Stenton 1969)—they were certainly free from the customary weekly work in

the lord’s land, being entitled only to render services to the king, and enjoyed some

kind of mobility, often becoming temporary inhabitants of towns (Miller and

Hatcher 1978; Wood 1987, p. 189; Faith 1997).

Interestingly, the evidence of Domesday Book—as interpreted by historical

geographer Darby (1952, 1977, 1986)—reflects a strong east-west gradient in the

geographical distribution of the groups of peasants with the greatest freedom and the

highest mobility (see Fig. 5). Indeed, in 1086 more than 14,000 freemen and over

23,000 sokemen were holding land in some parts of East Anglia and the north East

Midlands. Their presence was specially prominent in Suffolk (44.9%), Norfolk

(40.4%), Nottinghamshire (30.6%), Leicestershire (30.4%) and most importantly

Lincolnshire (50.7%). These figures contrast with the general decline in other areas

immediately after the Norman conquest, when many members of this rank of

peasants sank again into villein status (Campbell 1990, p. 72). The rate for

Lincolnshire is astounding, with half the entire recorded population enjoying this

status in Lindsey and at least over one third in Kesteven and Holland (see Fig. 5).

This would reflect a prosperous society, marked by economic growth, with a large

and growing population, with some districts densely settled and whose ordinary

inhabitants—the backbone of society in this period—enjoyed a particular freedom

(Stenton 1969; Stafford 1985; Platts 1985; Wood 1987, p. 171; Roffe 1990).

Continuity in the elevated number of sokemen in the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries—when many linguistic innovations were reaching Lincolnshire—is

attested by the dozens of documents recording grants of small parcels of land by

‘free peasants’. Scholars have also proposed that such continuity may be related to

the reclamation of fenland areas in eastern Lindsey and in Holland, which

unchained the creation of ‘new lands’ on a larger scale than was possible anywhere

in Britain at that time. Economic development and population growth together

brought people into the fens around the Wash. Some social historians have qualified

this migration as a ‘‘veritable gold rush’’ (Wood 1987, p. 178) which, interestingly,

transformed this part of Lincolnshire into one of the wealthiest in England. The new


123

society that occupied these areas would certainly have included a high percentage of

free, prosperous, independent peasants, who enjoyed opportunities to prosper and,

accordingly, to become mobile individuals in a more open and dynamic society

(Wood 1987, p. 175–182; Britnell 1993).

Conclusion

Demographic information—the high concentration of people in Lincolnshire—and

the existence of realistic chances of mobility, whether in a vertical direction

(upwards or downwards in the social scale) or horizontally (from rural to urban

centres), must have been important forces favouring the dissemination of

innovations in the area. The following words by Bruce Campbell could be fairly

illuminating in this respect: ‘‘New social and economic developments diffused from

the free to the unfree [districts] and from the weakly manorialized to the strongly

Fig. 5 Distribution of sokemen in 1086 (Darby 1977, p. 65)


123

manorialized, thus subtly transforming the social and economic geography of the

country’’ (1990, p. 81). A parallel can be established between the progress of socio-

economic innovations and the effect that loose-knit networks and weak ties tend to

have over language variation and change. In our opinion it would make sense if the

phrase ‘linguistic developments’ was added at the beginning of the paragraph,

whether, in the case of Lincolnshire, they proceeded from the Midlands or the

North. In fact, the possibility that in a ‘transitional’ zone such as Lincolnshire, some

aspects of an advanced socio-economic development in the late Anglo-Saxon and

early Norman periods, at least in comparison with other parts of England at the time,

could correlate with the loosening of formerly closer networks, and that,

accordingly, the ties between individuals coming in contact with each other were

weakened, opens the ground for proposing the feasible connection of this

framework to the linguistically innovative quality of the area, in so far as such

patterns have been qualified as fundamental for the hasty diffusion of innovations

and changes in other contexts.

Acknowledgements This is an extended version of a paper delivered at the Conference of the

International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) held in London (August 2007) and we are grateful to

Stephen Baxter, Tony Healey and David Pratt for their suggestions and comments. The authors also wish

to acknowledge the financial support of Fundacion Seneca, Agencia Regional de Ciencia y Tecnologıa,

Region de Murcia (Spain) (Programa de Apoyo a la Investigacion en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales

2006, Project 02597).

References

Astill, G. (2000). General survey, 600–1300. In D. M. Palliser (Ed.), The Cambridge urban history ofBritain, Vol. 1: 600–1540 (pp. 27–49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ayres-Bennett, W. (2001). Socio-historical linguistics and the history of French. Journal of FrenchLanguage Studies, 11, 159–177.

Bennett, J. A. W. (1970). The Middle English dialect of the Northeast Midlands. Orbis, 19, 324–336.

Bennett, S., & Bennett, N. (1993). An historical atlas of Lincolnshire (Hull).

Bergs, A. (2005). Social networks and historical sociolinguistics. Studies in morphosyntactic variation inthe Paston letters. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Britnell, R. H. (1993). The commercialization of English society, 1000–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Brook, G. L. (1963). Middle English dialects. In G. L. Brook (Ed.), English dialects (pp. 43–61). London:

Andre Deutsch.

Campbell, B. M. S. (1990). People and land in the Middle Ages, 1066–1500. In R. A. Dodgshon &

R. A. Butlin (Eds.), An historical geography of England and Wales (pp. 69–121). London:

Academic Press.

Campbell, J., Eric, J., & Wormald, P. (1991). The Anglo-Saxons. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, P. (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Conde-Silvestre, J. C. (2007). Sociolinguıstica historica. Madrid: Gredos.

Conde-Silvestre, J. C., & Hernandez-Campoy, J. M. (2002). Modern geolinguistic tenets and the diffusion

of linguistic innovations in Late Middle English. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 38, 147–177.

Conde-Silvestre, J. C., & Hernandez-Campoy, J. M. (2004). A sociolinguistic approach to the diffusion of

chancery written practices in late fifteenth century private correspondence. NeuphilologischeMitteilungen, 105(2), 135–152.

Darby, H. C. (1952). The Domesday geography of England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Darby, H. C. (1977). Domesday England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Darby, H. C. (Ed.). (1986). An historical geography of England and Wales before AD 1800. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.


123

Dietz, K. (1989). Die historische Schichtung phonologischer Isoglossen in den englischen Dialekten: II.

Mittelenglische Isoglossen. In A. Fisher (Ed.), The history and the dialects of English. Festchrift forEduard Kolb (pp. 133–176). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag.

Dyer, A. (2000). Appendix: Ranking lists of English medieval towns. In D. M. Palliser (Ed.), TheCambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 1: 600–1540 (pp. 747–770). Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Dyer, C. (2003). Making a living in the Middle Ages. The people of Britain, 850–1520. Harmondsworth:

Penguin.

Ekwall, E. (1938). The Middle English [a:] – [o:] boundary. English Studies, 20, 147–168.

Faith, R. (1997). The English peasantry and the growth of lordship. London: Leicester University Press.

Fernandez, F. (1993). Historia de la lengua inglesa (2nd ed.). Madrid: Gredos.

Fernandez Cuesta, J., & Rodrıguez Ledesma, M. N. (2001). Dialectologıa del ingles medieval: niveles

fonetico-grafemico y morfologico. In I. de la Cruz Cabanillas & F. Javier Martın Arista (Eds.),

Linguıstica Historica Inglesa (pp. 447–509). Barcelona: Ariel.

Gimeno Menendez, F. (1995). Sociolinguistica Historica (Siglos X–XII). Madrid: Visor/Universidad de

Alicante.

Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–1380.

Granovetter, M. (1982). The strength of weak ties. A network theory revisited. In P. V. Marsden & N. Lin

(Eds.), Social structure and network analysis (pp. 105–130). London: Sage.

Hadley, D. M. (2000). The Northern Danelaw. Its social structure, c. 800–1100. London: Continuum.

Hinton, D. A. (2000). The large towns, 600–1300. In D. M. Palliser (Ed.), The Cambridge urban historyof Britain, Vol. 1: 600–1540 (pp. 217–243). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hogg, R. M. (2006). Old English dialectology. In A. van Kemenade & B. Lou (Eds.), The handbook of thehistory of English (pp. 395–416). Oxford: Blackwell.

Holt, R. (2000). Society and population, 600–1300. In D. M. Palliser (Ed.), The Cambridge urban historyof Britain, Vol. 1: 600–1540 (pp. 79–104). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Imhoff, B. (2000). Socio-historic networks ties and medieval Navarro-Aragonese. NeuphilologischeMitteilungen, 101, 443–450.

Jahr, E. H. (1999). Sociolinguistics in historical language contact: The Scandinavian languages and Low

German during the Hanseatic period. In E. H. Jahr (Ed.), Language change. Advances in historicalsociolinguistics (pp. 119–139). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Jordan, R. (1925). Handbuch der Mittelenglischen Grammatik (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitats-

buchhandlung). [A Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology (E. J. Crook, trans.). The

Hague: Mouton, 1974].

Keene, D. (2000). Metropolitan values: Migration, mobility and cultural norms, London 1100–1700. In L.

Wright (Ed.), The development of standard English, 1300–1800. Theories, descriptions, conflicts(pp. 93–114). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kristensson, G. (1967). A survey of Middle English dialects, 1290–1350: The six northern counties andLincolnshire. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup.

Kristensson, G. (1998). The dialects of Middle English. In R. Hickey & S. Puppel (Eds.), Languagehistory and linguistic modelling. A Fetschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th birthday (pp. 655–664).

Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Leith, D. (1998). A social history of English (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

Luick, K. (1921). Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Leipzig: Tauchnitz.

MacFarlane, A. (1977). Reconstructing historical communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

May, J. (1976). Prehistoric Lincolnshire. Lincoln: Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaelogy.

McIntosh, A. (1976). The language of the extant versions of Havelok the Dane. Medium Aevum, 45, 36–49

[Also in M. Laing (Ed.), Middle English dialectology. Essays on some principles and problems(pp. 224–236). Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989].

McIntosh, A., Michael, L. S., & Benskin, M. (1986). A linguistic atlas of late medieval English.

Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

Miller, E., & Hatcher, J. (1978). Medieval England. Rural society and economic change. London:

Longman.

Milroy, J. (1992a). Middle English dialectology. In N. F. Blake (Ed.), The Cambridge history of theEnglish language, Vol. 2: 1066–1476 (pp. 156–206). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Milroy, J. (1992b). Linguistic variation and change. On the historical sociolinguistics of English. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Milroy, L. (1987). Language and social networks (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.


123

Milroy, J., & Milroy, L. (1985). Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal ofLinguistics, 21, 339–384.

Milroy, L., & Milroy, J. (1992). Social network and social class: Toward and integrated sociolinguistic

model. Language in Society, 21, 1–26.

Moreno Fernandez, F. (2005). Historia social de las lenguas de Espana. Barcelona: Ariel.

Mosse, F. (1945). Manuel de l’anglais du Moyen Age des origines au XIVe siecle (Paris: Aubier

Montaigne). [A handbook of Middle English (J. A. Walker, trans.). Baltimore: John Hopkins

University Press, 1952].

Nevalainen, T. (2000). Mobility, social networks and language change in early modern England.

European Journal of English Studies, 4(3), 253–264.

Nevalainen, T., & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (Eds.). (1996). Sociolinguistics and language history. Studiesbased on the corpus of Early English correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Nevalainen, T., & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2003). Historical sociolinguistics. Language change in Tudorand Stuart England. London: Longman/Pearson Education.

Nevalainen, T., & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2000). The changing role of London on the linguistic map of

Tudor and Stuart English. In D. Kastovsky & A. Mettinger (Eds.), The history of English in a socialcontext. Essays in historical sociolinguistics (pp. 280–337). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Orton, H. (1929). The medial development of ME [o:] (tense), French u ([y:]) and ME eu (OE eow) in the

dialects of the North of England. Englische Studien, 63, 229–251.

Palliser, D. M. (2000). The origins of British towns. In D. M. Palliser (Ed.), The Cambridge urban historyof Britain, Vol. 1: 600–1540 (pp. 17–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Penny, R. (2000). Variation and change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Platts, G. (1985). Land and people in Medieval Lincolnshire. Lincoln: Society for Lincolnshire History

and Archaelogy.

Postan, M. H. (1972). The medieval economy and society. An economic history of Britain in the MiddleAges. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Roffe, D. R. (1990). Domesday book and northern society. English Historical Review, 100, 310–340.

Roffe, D. R. (1992). An introduction to the Lincolnshire Domesday. In A. Williams & G. H. Martin

(Eds.), The Lincolnshire Domesday. London: Alecto.

Roffe, D. R. (2007). Decoding Domesday. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.

Romaine, S. (1982). Socio-historical linguistics. Its status and methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Romaine, S. (1988). Historical sociolinguistics: Problems and methodology. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar &

K. J. Mattheier (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An International handbook of the science of language andsociety (Vol. 2, pp. 1452–1469). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Sawyer, P. (1998). Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire. Lincoln: Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaelogy.

Smith, J. (1992). The use of English: Language contact, dialect variation and written standardization

during the Middle English period. In T. W. Machan & C. T. Scott (Eds.), English in its socialcontext. Essays in historical sociolinguistics (pp. 47–68). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, J. (1996). An historical study of English. Function, form and change. London: Routledge.

Stafford, P. (1985). The East Midlands in the early Middle Ages. London: Leicester University Press.

Stenton, F. M. (1969). The free peasantry of the Northern Danelaw. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Toon, T. (1983). The politics of early Old English sound change. New York: Academic Press.

Toon, T. (1992a). The social and political contexts of language change in Anglo-Saxon England. In T. W.

Machan & C. T. Scott (Eds.), English in its social context. Essays in historical Sociolinguistics(pp. 38–46). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Toon, T. (1992b). Old English dialects. In R. M. Hogg (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the Englishlanguage, Vol 1: The beginnings to 1066 (pp. 409–451). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trousdale, G. (2005). The social context of Kentish raising. Issues in Old English sociolinguistics.

International Journal of English Studies, 5(1), 59–76.

Unwin, T. (1990). Towns and trade, 1066–1500. In R. A. Dodgshon & R. A. Butlin (Eds.), An historicalgeography of England and Wales (pp. 123–149). London: Academic Press.

Wolfram, W., & Schilling-Estes N. (2003). Dialectology and linguistic diffusion. In B. D. Joseph &

J. D. Janda (Eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wood, M. (1987). Domesday England. A search for the roots of England. London: Book Club Associates.

Wright, R. (1989). Latın tardıo y romance temprano en Espana y la Francia carolingia. Madrid: Gredos.


123

transitional areas and social history in middle english dialectology: the case of lincolnshire

Documents