The Geography of English in England

doi:10.1017/9781009205702.007

4 - The Geography of English in England

from Part I - The Context of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2025

Merja Stenroos

Edited by

Laura Wright and

Raymond Hickey

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Laura Wright: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Raymond Hickey: Affiliation:
University of Limerick

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Summary

This chapter addresses the study of the geographical aspects of English linguistic variation in England, from the beginnings to the sixteenth century. The major challenge in the study of early periods of English is the scarcity of sources, which are often not easy to localise. Only in the fifteenth century does the production of administrative materials in English, in a highly variable writing system, allow for a systematic study of geographical variation covering the entire country; for earlier periods materials are much scantier, and many studies have therefore made use of reconstructive methods. This chapter discusses and problematises the different approaches used by earlier scholars; finally, using the newly compiled Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD), it addresses the possibilities of studying early geographical variation directly, with focus on individual items, rather than through the reconstruction of dialect areas or continua.

Keywords

dialectology geolinguistics dialect geography Old English Middle English localization Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents local documents

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Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge History of the English Language
Context, Contact and Development
, pp. 99 - 129

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205702.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

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