Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English in the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

THERE has been some discussion of late among descriptive linguists and socio-linguists as to the nature of "standard" English, the one tending to deny the existence of a standard, because of variations in the spoken language, and the other arguing that the standard language is an elitist shibboleth erected to perpetuate the authority of the dominant culture.' Neither of these positions recognizes the historical fact that in every society there is a formal, official language in which business is carried on, which is different from the various casual dialects of familiar exchange. The more stable and enduring a society becomes, the more regular become its administrative procedures. Part of the process of regularizing the procedures is the standardizing of the official language in which they are transacted and recorded. The official language thus very early achieves a regular written form.2 Official languages have always been the prerogatives of ruling hierarchies, from Mandarin Chinese to Sanskrit to Classical Latin. The "standard" West Saxon used throughout England in the tenth and eleventh centuries was evidently the product of King Alfred's royal secretariat.3 That this language was different from the spoken Old English dialects may be deduced from the rapidity with which it disappeared as soon as the central administration turned to Latin and French.4 My interest is in the re-emergence of English in the fifteenth century as an administrative language, independent of the spoken dialect of any region or class, and, in the long run, imposing its own structure and idiom upon those who conduct the affairs of the nation. Curiously, the rise of standard written English has never been studied in