Hi Dave,



With regards to regional dialects changing due to technology, there's a comment in Joseph Wright's "English Dialect Grammar" (1905) https://archive.org/details/englishdialectgr00wriguoft where he discusses the fact that dialects are disappearing.  He states:



'There can be no doubt that pure dialect speech is rapidly disappearing even in country districts, owing to the spread of education, and to modern facilities for intercommunication' (p.vii)



I've got a lot of (digitised) texts from the nineteenth century relating to Yorkshire dialect, too - I seem to remember one or two of them mentioning that they were written to 'record' the dialect before it 'faded into oblivion' because of the railways, etc.  If I come across anything else, I'll let you know.



Finally, I don't know if this will be of any use to you, but there's a delightful comment in Morris' "Yorkshire Folk Talk" (1892) https://archive.org/details/morrisyorkshiref00morr about trying to record some Yorkshire dialect on a phonograph, and we get an early reference to the observer's paradox.  Speaking of the difficulty in getting accurate phonological representations in 'philological treatises', he says:



'Some of those interested in the dialect have suggested half-jokingly that the phonograph should be brought into requisition in registering the tones of the folk-speech.  This idea is a delightful one, no doubt, but there is one insuperable difficulty in the way of its being carried out.  It is no easy matter to get the old folks to talk in their broadest every-day speech to you in the ordinary interchange of ideas; there is always a certain unwillingness about it; and I am thoroughly convinced that one would have about as much chance of inducing them to talk their archaic Yorkshire into a phonograph as of getting them to play a sonata of Beethoven' (pp.44-45).



So perhaps not quite language change, but maybe style shifting (due to technology - i.e. the phonograph) is being referred to here?



I hope this helps,



All the best,



Paul



__________





Dr Paul Cooper

Lecturer in English Language



Rm 242

19 Abercromby Square

School of English

University of Liverpool

Liverpool

L69 7ZG



0151 7943686



https://liverpool.academia.edu/PaulCooper





-----Original Message-----

From: Variationist List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dave Sayers

Sent: 17 April 2014 10:43

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Historical debate about technological influences on English



Can anyone recommend any readings about historical debate (public, civic, private, political, etc.) on the way technology has influenced the English language?



I've got a few examples but not much. I know at least that grumbling about technology influencing English has a long history. Supposedly the first example was the 'inkhorn controversy' of the 16th and 17th century, where opinion was split by the wholesale introduction of large chunks of Latin and Greek vocabulary to describe innovations in science and medicine (i.e. advances in technology). George Puttenham includes this among a long list of other complaints in The Art of English Poesie, published in 1589

-- 19th century reprint here: https://archive.org/details/arteofenglishpoe00putt,

page 157 (click the 'PDF' link on the left for a searchable scanned copy).



Then with the rising spread of literacy and school education in the nineteenth century came concern that local dialects were dying away, which one could argue is a product of advancing technologies of transport and communication. A.J. Ellis says a lot about this in his dialectological opus (digitised version here: 

https://archive.org/details/onearlyenglishpr00elliuoft), e.g. according to one of his respondents, the Hampshire dialect “is rapidly dying out, and has been for the last two generations. Even the oldest farm-labourers are so much accustomed to educated

(London) pronunciation, that this certainly influences their natural speech.” 

(1889:99). Similarly in Bishop Middleham (near Durham), “I was taken to see two natives, George Lazenby and William Greenwell […]. They told me that the talk used to be much broader than it is now, and that the school had knocked up the dialect.” 

(1889:653).



A much more recent 'historical' example could be David Crystal's 'Txtng: the Gr8 Db8'. This was about 'txt spk', the system of abbreviations so hated by newspaper letter writers and others, but which has since more or less disappeared due to ubiquitous unlimited text bundles in phone contracts.



What these different examples demonstrate is two quite different lamentations about technological developments influencing English: on the one hand, contributing to slovenly improper practices, and on the other, diluting linguistic heritage (or both).



So... does anyone know of any other readings showcasing this type of debate in history? It strikes me that the introduction of the printing press must have spurred a good deal of debate about changing orthographical practices, especially with the various changes that this introduced; but I really can't find many clear examples. 

One fairly useful article is 'The Stigma of Print: A note on the social bases of Tudor poetry', published 1951.



With previous queries like this, I've had luck with making a publicly editable online bibliography for all to contribute to and share, so I've made one for this too: 

http://goo.gl/4H9OrN. Please head along and add your contributions.



Yours historically,

Dave



--

Dr. Dave Sayers

Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK [log in to unmask] | http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers



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