The Language of Queen Elizabeth I presents one of the first diachronic accounts of the language - the idiolect - of the Tudor monarch who ruled England and Ireland from 1558-1603.

• Suggests that Elizabeth I was a leader of language innovation and change, using it to build her complex social identity as a female monarch in a masculine position of power
• Examines a number of the monarch's letters, speeches, and translations
• Establishes Elizabeth I's participation in ten morpho-syntactic changes and explores her spelling practice
• Develops theoretical and methodological frameworks of variationist sociolinguistics through the analysis of the individual speaker
• Argues for the significance of style as a linguistic and material property in our account of language variation and change

About the Author

Mel Evans is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Birmingham. Her research explores the relationship between language variation and change, style, and identity in contemporary and Early Modern English, with a particular interest in the language of the Tudor Court.

Reviews

"I recommend this work to scholars specialising in Elizabeth I, regardless of their discipline; historical and present-day sociolinguists working particularly with idiolect research; and those interested in historical spelling variation and historical authorship attribution." (Cercles, 1 February 2015)

Book Information
ISBN 9781118672877
Author Mel Evans
Format Paperback
Page Count 266
Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 345g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 150mm * 10mm