Review of Blank, Paula, 'Broken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings' (The Politics of Language), London and New York, Routledge, 1996: cloth; pp. viii, 211; RRP. £50.00, US $69.95.

Abstract

The central concern of Broken English, one made very clear by the subtitle, is to show how several European languages - English amongst them - were concerned to centralise one particular version of their language, which thereby became the national language. In the case of English, Paula Bank admits to having been indebted to the 1991 text, Richard W. Bailey's Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, which explored the 'ways in which linguistic communities are formed' and the emergence of standard languages. Bailey'S scepticism about English's 'triumphalism' at the Renaissance, and about the conviction of superiority of a certain variety/varieties within the language, led him to predict that many 'orthodox' assumptions about English would need further examination at length. This is exactly what the present study is concerned to do.