Lecturer: Seth Lerer. Originally produced in 1998.
Contents:
pt. 1. The origins of English: introduction to the study of language -- The historical study of language: methods and approaches -- The prehistory of English: the Indo-European context -- Reconstructing meaning and sound -- Words and worlds: historical linguistics and the study of culture -- The beginnings of English -- Old English: the Anglo-Saxon worldview -- Changing language: did the Normans really conquer English? -- Conquering language: what did the Normans do to English? -- Chaucer's English -- Dialect jokes and literary representation in Middle English -- A multilingual world: medieval attitudes toward language change and variation. pt. 2. Making modern English: the Return of English as a standard -- How we speak: the great vowel shift and the making of modern English -- What we say : the expanding English vocabulary -- The shape of modern English: changes in syntax and grammar -- Renaissance attitudes toward teaching English -- The language of Shakespeare (1): Drama, grammar, and pronunciation -- The language of Shakespeare (2): Poetry, sound, and sense -- The Bible in English -- Samuel Johnson and his Dictionary -- New Standards in English -- Semantic change: dictionaries and the histories of words -- Values and words in the 19th and 20th centuries. pt. 3. English in America and beyond: the beginnings of American English -- Making the American language from Noah Webster to H.L. Mencken -- The rhetoric of independence from Jefferson to Lincoln -- The language of the American Self -- American regionalism -- American dialects in literature -- The impact of African-American English -- An Anglophone world -- The language of science: the changing nature of 20th century English -- The science of language: the study of language in the 20th century -- Modern linguistics and the politics of language study -- Conclusions and provocations.
Summary:
This course of thirty-six lectures (30 min. each) introduces the student to the history of the English language, from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples, through the literary and cultural documents of its 1500 year span, to the state of American speech of the present day.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.