Standardisation Schools Paper 1

Chancery Standard

M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2nd ed. (1993), ch. 6:
“Languages of Record”.
John H. Fisher, “Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English in the Fifteenth
Century,” Speculum 52 (1977), 870-899; repr. in Fisher (1996)
“ “ “Caxton and Chancery English,” in R.F. Yeager, ed., Fifteenth Century
Studies (1984); repr. in Fisher (1996)
“ “ “A Language Policy for Lancastrian England,” PMLA 107 (1992), 1168-
1180; repr. in Fisher (1996)
“ “ The Emergence of Standard English (1996)
John H. Fisher et al, An Anthology of Chancery English (1984), esp. 26-51 (Orthography,
Vocabulary, Morphology).
**A Linguistic Atlas of Later Medieval English, ed. Angus McIntosh et al. Volume I (1986)
pp. 47-50.
Malcolm Richardson, “Henry V, the English Chancery, and Chancery English,” Speculum 55
(1980), 726-750.
M.L. Samuels, “Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology,” English Studies 44
(1963), 81-94; repr. in Margaret Laing, ed., Middle English Dialectology: essays on some
principles and problems (1989)
“ “ “Spelling and Dialect in the Late and Post-Middle English Periods,” in
Benskin and Samuels (1981)(below); repr. in J.J. Smith, ed., The English of Chaucer and his
contemporaries (1988)
Arthur O. Sandved, “Prolegomena to a renewed study of the rise of Standard English,” in
Michael Benskin and M.L. Samuels, eds, So Meny People Longages and Tonges (1981)
Jeremy Smith, An Historical Study of English: Function, form and change, pp. 68-77.
D.G. Scragg, A History of English Spelling (1974)

Essay question: “What are the features of Chancery English and how and why does it
develop as a written standard?”

General Reading (Concepts of Standardisation and Correctness)

Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts, eds, Standard English: The Widening Debate (London:
Routledge, 1999)
T. Crowley, ed., Proper English? (1991)
S. Greenbaum, Good English and the Grammarian (1988)
D. Leith, “The Social Contexts of English,” in The English Language, ed. W.F. Bolton and D.
Crystal (1989)
S.A. Leonard, The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage 1700-1800 (1929)
J. Milroy and L. Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and
Standardisation (1991)
W.H. Mittins et al, Attitudes to English Usage (Oxford: OUP, 1970)
Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels, The State of the Language (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980)
Peter Trudgill, “Standard English in England,” in Language in the British Isles, ed. Peter
Trudgill (Cambridge: CUP, 1984)
Susie Tucker, English Examined: 1600-1800 (1961)