{"title":"Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch","authors":"Joshua R. Brown","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For eighteenth and nineteenth century Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, a variety of German was the language of their books, their newspapers, and their schools. Being far from the European homeland created a hegemonic shift in the linguistic lives of these early German Americans; they were adopting an American regional identity. Along with their shift in identities and in linguistic hegemony, structural aspects of the languages they used also changed: their written German was in contact with English and with their spoken Pennsylvania Dutch. In addition, the limitations of formal education in German at rural schools meant that the emphasis among most Pennsylvania Dutch was on the receptive knowledge of German and not on productive control of the language. In time, a variety of German called Pennsylvania High German emerged in the publications, writings, and schools of Pennsylvania. This article shares recent findings of a large corpus of written attempts at Pennsylvania High German by Civil War soldiers. It discusses both the structural aspects of their written language as well as the negotiation of their American regional identities through a multilingual lens at the first major moment of increased contact with outsiders.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"196 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86238804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schaeken Jos: Voices on Birchbark. Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 43)","authors":"S. Franklin","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2019-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2019-0002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83254765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Varying social roles and networks on a family farm: Evidence from Swedish immigrant letters, 1880s to 1930s","authors":"Angela Hoffman, Merja Kytö","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present study investigates patterns of language use in the ego documents written by three Swedish immigrants: Nils Blomberg (born in 1839), Mathilda Blomberg, (b. 1863), and Anton Blomberg (b. 1885), their eldest son. The empirical foundation of the investigation is a set of 32 family letters sent over a period of nearly fifty years (1885–1934) from the rural Smoky Valley in Kansas to Mathilda’s home village in Östergötland, Sweden. We analyze the writers’ lexis, discourse patterning (formulaic versus free-flowing), and re-current topics, and the social roles and networks that are manifest in their correspondence. The three writers continued to correspond in the Swedish language over the years. Our diachronic analysis of their lexis and discourse patterning reveals individual variation across the authors’ production. For example, Mathilda’s correspondence contains some evidence of heritage Swedish (i.e. Swedish that has diverged from the home country, due to geographical separation and language contact with English). Across her lifespan, Mathilda integrates some vocabulary for plants, places, and jobs that diverges from the lexis she recalls from her early years in Sweden, and she draws attention to this lexical divergence for the sake of her readers. Anton, a childhood bilingual in Swedish and English, systematically translates English lexis to Swedish in letters, presumably with the goal to bring his Kansas experiences closer to his Swedish relatives. In particular, the letters, especially those by Mathilda, reveal not only how the individuals communicate information about their social roles in rural Kansas, but also their desires to maintain the networks connecting their family farm in the U.S. to Mathilda’s home village in Sweden.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75558491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beal Joan C. and Sylvie Hancil: Perspectives on Northern Englishes (Topics in English Linguistics 96)","authors":"Konstantin Niehaus","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75565657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent: The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History (Languages and Culture in History)","authors":"T. Kamusella","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88203819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letters home: German-American Civil War soldiers’ letters 1864–1865","authors":"Samantha M. Litty","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Phillipp Schneider, German-American Civil War soldier and resident of Wisconsin since the age of 9, wrote 45 letters from March 1864 to August 1865, totaling ca. 22,500 words. I analyze these letters from a sociolinguistic perspective, considering both the unique mix of German and English usage and the socio-historical implications surrounding the letters. These are supplemented for comparison with two letters written by German-American Heritage German speaker and soldier, Jacob Goelzer, who wrote to Schneider’s sister twice in 1864. I describe the importance of when and under what circumstances these letters were written, and I also delineate instances from the letters of how the dominant community language, English, has influenced the German used and compare the use of German and English.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"2008 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83353411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Canadian heritage German across three generations: A diary-based study of language shift in action","authors":"D. Stolberg","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2019-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2019-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is well known that migration has an effect on language use and language choice. If the language of origin is maintained after migration, it tends to change in the new contact setting. Often, migrants shift to the new majority language within few generations. The current paper examines a diary corpus containing data from three generations of one German-Canadian family, ranging from 1867 to 1909, and covering the second to fourth generation after immigration. The paper analyzes changes that can be observed between the generations, with respect to the language system as well as to the individuals’ decision on language choice. The data not only offer insight into the dynamics of acquiring a written register of a heritage language, and the eventual shift to the majority language. They also allow us to identify different linguistic profiles of heritage speakers within one community. It is discussed how these profiles can be linked to the individuals’ family backgrounds and how the combination of these backgrounds may have contributed to giving up the heritage language in favor of the majority language.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74072777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of eighteenth-century newspapers in the disappearance of Upper German variants in Austria","authors":"Anna D. Havinga","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2017-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2017-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper investigates what role eighteenth-century newspapers played in the disappearance of e-apocope in Austria. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of this Upper German feature in two contexts (the e-apocope in plural nouns and singular dative forms) trace diachronic variation in the Wienerisches Diarium/Wiener Zeitung in order to evaluate the role that newspapers played in the selection and dissemination of language norms. The results show that this newspaper disseminated the final -e in plural forms before it was prescribed by contemporary eighteenth-century grammarians active in Austria, indicating that newspapers – among other texts written by the educated classes – contributed to the selection as well as dissemination of particular variants. The use of dative -e was, however, less consistent, with a qualitative analysis revealing preferences by individual correspondents. This challenges current scholarly assumptions on the homogeneity of language practice within the text type newspaper. Instead, this article argues that historical newspapers have to be seen as a compilation of texts rather than as homogeneous texts.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89144574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"McEnery, Anthony Helen Baker: Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution. Computational Linguistics and History","authors":"Merja Kytö","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2017-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2017-0026","url":null,"abstract":"This monograph by Anthony McEnery and Helen Baker brings together a number of areas of study, among them historical corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, word studies, and social history. The authors have aimed to “explore, in a spirit of full cooperation, what a linguist and historian can achieve together” (p. 1). The study thus takes us back in time to the socio-cultural circumstances of seventeenthcentury England and focusses on “women who traded sex for cash or some benefit in kind in the seventeenth century” (p. 2). The broad aim of the book is to investigate how prostitution was represented in contemporary writings: how did people think and write about those involved in the sex trade and the trade itself, and what was the language and discourse about these issues like? These are intriguing questions about the life of almost any sections of society in the past, and they may be the more intriguing when targeting those involved in controversial professional activities such as prostitution. The seventeenth century was a period of political and social upheaval in the history of England, and it was also the period when the English language continued to take shape and navigate towards what was subsequently known as ‘Standard English’. As their source of information, the authors opted for public discourse and “general written English from the period” (p. 2), setting aside specialized documents such as court records, which might have conveyed judicial rather than general attitudes to prostitution. Clearly, the goal set for the study required advanced methodology. The methodology the authors chose comprises automated searches of quantitative data in large-scale language corpora containing hundreds of millions of words drawn from machine-readable texts of various types, and traditional close readings and qualitative analyses of examples drawn from texts. This is precisely where the skills of a historian and a corpus linguist could be harnessed to raise and answer research questions in a joint creative effort. Chapter 1, “Introduction”, presents the aim of the book and surveys the ways in which electronic corpora, big and small, have been used in previous Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 2019; 20170026","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"204 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91009897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nonstandard periphrastic DO and verbal -s in the south west of England","authors":"Fiona de Both","doi":"10.1515/jhsl-2018-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2018-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper aims to investigate the distribution of periphrastic DO and verbal -s in the south west of England using the FRED-s corpus. The data supports the earlier reported suggestion that the two features are in complementary distribution with regard to region: in counties where one feature is favoured, the other feature is disfavoured and speakers who use one feature tend not to use the other feature. However, there is some overlap as some speakers in the FRED-s corpus use both features, giving support to an idea, earlier proposed, of a transitory area in which a possible change takes place where speakers drop the use of DO and adopt verbal -s. Furthermore, the data shows an interesting tendency where periphrastic DO favours the habitual verbal aspect, whereas verbal -s favours the punctual verbal aspect. These findings could indicate that the two features have a different grammatical function. However, the overall frequency with which these two features occur is very low and seems to suggest that they are disappearing. Moreover, their use seems to be limited to short originally Germanic words, suggesting that the two features only occur in contexts where they were originally used, but are not productive.","PeriodicalId":29883,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics","volume":"95 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74525341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}