History of English (distance)

This course aims to introduce the main developments in the History of English at a variety of linguistic levels, as well as the controversies that have accompanied those developments. The first session of the course discusses different versions of the history of English, including the controversies surrounding its origins. The following four sessions encompass the key structural aspects in the development of English, specifically concerning letters, spellings, lexis and semantics. These sessions will also introduce the latest methods in establishing the descriptive history of English (notably through the use of corpora and the electronic Oxford English Dictionary) and the latest theoretical accounts (e.g. lexicalization and grammaticalization). The following session is designed to offer an opportunity for students to practice researching historical linguistic features and to learn about what computer resources are available. The following three sessions introduce three fields – historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and historical genre analysis – that have come to the fore in the last decade of English historical scholarship. Where possible, sessions will not only discuss and problematize the topics and theories, but also aim to equip students with the skills for historical research.