The chapters collected in this volume examine how the sociohistorical and cultural context may influence structural features of lexis and text types. Each paper pays particular attention to social 'labels' and attitudes (conservative, religious, ideological, endearing, or other), thereby focusing on their dynamic and historical dimension. Changes in these are analyzed in order to explain morphological, lexical, and textual changes that would otherwise be hard to account for. Together, they provide a varied window on the effect of historical versions of a dynamic society on lexis and text. Examining lexical and textual change in history from a sociocultural perspective teaches us a great deal - not just about the past, but it also makes us think about similar phenomena in the present, enhancing our knowledge about how universally human some of these phenomena are.

• SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF LEXIS AND TEXTIN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
• Editorial page
• Title page
• LCC data
• Table of contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Philology as linguistically informed cultural history
  • Conspicuous lexical choice in past societies
  • Historical layers in text and genre
  • Lexis, morphology, and a changing society
  • Conclusion
  • References
• Part 1. Conspicuous lexical choice in past societies
• Chapter 1. Old English ead in Anglo-Saxon given names: A comparative approach to Anglo-Saxon anthroponomy
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Old English ead- and wel- and their cognates in Germanic poetry and anthroponomy
    • 2.1 Ead- in Old English poetry
    • 2.2 OE wela, Old Saxon welo, OHG uuóla “riches, prosperity” in poetry and anthroponomy
    • 2.3 Weland
    • 2.4 Plouton
    • 2.5 Greek plouto- anthroponyms
    • 2.6 Germanic anthroponyms containing the wel- element: The OE compound eadwela and its Germanic cognates
    • 2.7 Anthroponomical implications of the poetic use of ead
  • 3. Slavic žir
    • 3.1 The lexeme for “riches” in Slavic languages
    • 3.2 Slavic anthroponyms containing the žir- element
    • 3.3 The lexeme žir in the Slavic languages
    • 3.4 Slavic anthroponyms
  • 4. Dithematic Germanic anthroponyms containing the ead- element
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Data sources
  • References
• Chapter 2. News and relations: Highlighted textual labels in the titles of early modern news pamphlets
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Previous linguistic observations on textual labels in Early Modern English pamphlets
  • 3. Materials and methods
  • 4. Results and analysis
    • 4.1 Textual labels
    • 4.2 Visual highlighting
  • 5. Discussion
  • 6. Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 3. “… all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air”: Metaphorical connections in the history of English
  • 0. Christian Kay, 1940–2016
  • 1. Mapping metaphorical connections
  • 2. Examining metaphor through lexical overlap
  • 3. 1Q The supernatural
  • 4. Angels real and imagined
  • 5. Roots of evil
  • 6. Conclusion
  • References
    • Dictionaries and online resources
    • Books and articles
• Part 2. Historical layers in text and genre
• Chapter 4. Conservatism and innovation in Anglo-Saxon scribal practice
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Methodology
  • 3. Relict forms
    • 3.1 f-shaped
    • 3.2 Denasalization
    • 3.3 Double vowels
  • 4. B1 as emender
    • 4.1 Successful interventions (lexical substitutions)
    • 4.2 Unsuccessful interventions (word division)
    • 4.3 Graphically based substitutions
  • 5. Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 5. Old English wills: A genre study
  • 1. Legal language
  • 2. Old English legal writing
  • 3. A new approach to research on OE wills
    • 3.1 Method
    • 3.2 Data
  • 4. Corpus analysis
    • 4.1 Text structure
    • 4.2 Linguistic features
  • 5. Summary and conclusion
  • Corpus
  • References
• Chapter 6. Spatio-temporal systems in Chaucer
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. What are spatio-temporal systems?
  • 3. Elements of space and time
    • 3.1 Frequency analysis
    • 3.2 Proximal vs. distal elements
  • 4. Spatio-temporal systems in discourse
    • 4.1 Typical combinations
    • 4.2 Discourse-structuring elements
    • 4.3 Combining proximal or distal elements
    • 4.4 The alternation between proximal and distal perspectives
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Chapter 7. “A riddle to myself I am”: Argument shifting in English congregational song between 1500 and 1900
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. English congregational song as a genre
  • 3. Argument shifting
  • 4. Corpus and methodology
  • 5. Argument shifting in English congregational song
    • 5.1 Main results
    • 5.2 Meter and rhyme
    • 5.3 Subtypes of argument shifting
    • 5.4 The two major patterns of argument shifting
    • 5.5 Summary
  • 6. Comparison: Argument shifting in secular poetry
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Primary sources
    • Corpus of congregational songs
    • Secular poetry
  • References
  • Appendix
• Part 3. Lexis, morphology, and a changing society
• Chapter 8. Common to the North of England and to New England: British English regionalisms in John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms
    • 2.1 General aims and sources
    • 2.2 Americanisms
  • 3. British English regionalisms in the Dictionary of Americanisms
  • 4. Concluding remarks
  • References
    • Primary sources
    • Secondary sources
• Chapter 9. Betwixt, amongst, and amidst: The diachronic development of function words with final /st/
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Between
    • 2.1 Etymological notes and historical overview based on the HC
    • 2.2 Period-by-period description
    • 2.3 Historical summary of between
  • 3. among
    • 3.1 Etymological notes and historical overview based on the HC
    • 3.2 Period-by-period description
    • 3.3 Historical summary of among
  • 4. amid
    • 4.1 Etymological notes and historical overview based on the HC
    • 4.2 Period-by-period description
    • 4.3 Historical summary of amid
  • 5. Discussion
    • 5.1 Proposed accounts of final t
    • 5.2 Paragoge
    • 5.3 Word boundary morphonology
    • 5.4 Semantic association with the superlative
    • 5.5 Small lexical group of function words
    • 5.6 Accounting for the decline of the types with /st/
  • 6. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
    • Corpora and dictionaries
    • Secondary sources
  • Appendix 1
  • Appendix 2
  • Appendix 3
• Chapter 10. English word clipping in a diachronic perspective
  • 1. Definition of terms – Scope of coverage
  • 2. A historical overview of the data
    • 2.1 Old English
    • 2.2 Middle English
    • 2.3 Later patterns of clipping
  • 3. The big picture: Why does it matter?
    • 3.1 Clippings as new evidence for onset
    • 3.2 Clippings and the salience of stress
    • 3.3 Morphological identity and clipping
    • 3.4 Clippings and left-alignment
  • 4. Summary: The shifting priorities in clipping
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Index