Introducing the History of the English Language

by Seth Lerer

This essential new text provides a comprehensive, modern account of how the English language originated, developed, changed, and continues to morph into new forms in contemporary society. It first offers a rigorous, approachable introduction to the building blocks of language itself and then traces English language usage’s messy development in society, beginning with its origins in the Indo-European language family and continuing chronologically through the Old, Middle, Modern, and present-day forms. Seth Lerer deftly tells this story not as a tale of standards and authority but of differences and diversity. He draws on public and private literary sources from different regions and those in different social classes, highlighting sources from women and people of color – and introduces readers to the effects of technology on English, and the politics of dialect and racial, gender, regional, and class identity across these periods. Further, this text extensively addresses the rich diversity of English varieties, with innovative, focused chapters dedicated to American Englishes, African American Englishes, Global Englishes, and Virtual Englishes. Requiring no prior knowledge of language history or linguistics, offering an array of supplemental activities as online support material, and taking a socially motivated approach to pedagogy that seeks to generate productive reflective and discussion about language difference and politics, this book enables and encourages the twenty-first century student in the United States to see their own language use as deeply implicated in power dynamics and social relationships.

Genres: Language

300 pages, Paperback

Published January 29, 2024

About the author

Professor Seth Lerer (1956 -) is a contemporary Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University, specialising in historical analyses of the English language, in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, including in particular Geoffrey Chaucer.

-wikipedia

Reviews

[Don Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first learned about this book via our local bookstore, Warwick's here in La Jolla in 2024. The subject of the book intrigued me and the author, Dr. Seth Lerer, was going to be appearing at the store to give a talk on the book.

Dr. Lerer was a terrific speaker. He's one of those academics that is a dynamic speaker who also has a great sense of humor and does not take themselves seriously. I'm glad I went see him speak (he even was able to speak a little Old English). The talk definitely set the stage to read this book. Dr. Lerer is not only a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCSD, he was also the Dean of Arts and Humanities there. Although he is "retired", he is currently teaching at Stanford. His street cred is above (and beyond) reproach.

Let me say this from the start, this book is considered a text book, and a text book for those majoring in linguistics. For you non-linguistics majors, you'll just have to soldier through the technical terms geared toward those students. BUT....if you can get through that aspect, there are some treasures waiting for you.

There is a substantial introduction that the reader will find helpful. Dr. Lerer then delves into the Indo-European languages, which sets the path to what will eventually become the English language. For you history geeks, there are some tantalizing tidbits that you will probably not read in standard history books. Dr. Lerer will also break some standard myths on what we think (or thought) was a linear path of development of our native tongue.

This book is not what I would call a "fast read" (unless, of course, you are an advance linguistics major), so it will take you a bit to get through. The good news is that the book (sans index) is only 271 pages long. Once you get to the chapter on Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible, the reading gets much easier. I much enjoyed the chapters that dealt with English from 1800 to the present, and when I mean present, I mean to 2023 (the book was released in 2024).

If the reader is feeling inspired enough, there is a link to support materials on the copywrite page that anyone is free to go to and download to complete, just like you were taking the course!

The only reason why I gave this book four stars instead of five is because I'm not a linguist, so I will leave it to people trained in the field to make that judgement.