Style-Shifting and Accommodative Competence in Late Middle English Written Correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the Test of Time

Abstract

Style constitutes an essential component for the non-referential indexicality of speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication. Historical Sociolinguistics applies tenets and findings of present-day research to the interpretation of linguistic material from the past, but without giving intra-speaker variation the same relevance as to inter-speaker variation. The aim of this paper is to show results obtained from the investigation of style-shifting processes in late Medieval England by applying contemporary models of diaphasic variation of Audience Design to historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the use of the orthographic variable (TH) by male members of the Paston family from the Paston Letters corpus when addressing recipients from different social ranks. The data show addressee and referee-based accommodation patterns in the communicative practice of Medieval individuals. In addition to tracing language variation and change in speech communities, private letters may also shed light onto the motivations and mechanisms for intra-speaker variation in individuals and their stylistic choices in past societies.