ENG457H1F: Suggestions for major paper/seminar subjects

(you’ll have to narrow them into a 1770s topic)

This list is a work-in-progress. I keep adding to it, so keep checking it (and let me know if there are subjects you’re interested in that aren’t represented here).

I can and will help you identify how to start thinking about your research. My giant database of book reviews, for instance, has furnished me with some of these general subjects. I also like The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Vol. 2: 1660-1800: it's got sections about "Travel" (listing books published through the period, arranged by place), "Sport", "Dictionaries and glossaries" (e.g. The sportsman's dictionary 1778), "Philosophy" (lots of linguistic philosophy going on), "Economic theory", "Science" (Joseph Priestley's written on electricity, optics, air...). You can also use Jack Lynch's C18th Chronology to get ideas (e.g. about contemporary developments in politics, technology, science). Paul Langford's A polite and commercial people, on short-term loan, is very useful for getting a sense of the cultural and historical background.

A Chronological English Dictionary, ed. Thomas Finkenstaedt et al. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1970) is a great starting point: why not write a paper about all the words/uses listed as "new" for a particular year?

Representing society

• Insults
• Terms of address
• Terms denoting social class
• Terms denoting other social constructions and categories: ethnicity
• A word study of words like vulgar or barbarous or public(k) (relating to women's role in public...): these are very very common, so you'll have to narrow your (con)texts down sharply

The spoken language

• Pick an elocutionist of the 1770s (more or less): the aims and influence of Thomas Sheridan, William Kenrick …
  

• Bluestocking conversation: reality and representation

The written language

• The function of italics

• The function of capitalization (narrow down: poetry)

• Intentionally non-standard spelling in the 1770s

• Continuity and change in the layout of children's books: fonts, font size, titles and title pages
  

Grammar

• Pick a grammar writer of the 1770s: the aims and influence of James Elphinston, Robert Baker, George Campbell, Joseph Priestley (1768…!)…

• Compare and contrast the prefaces to 5 or 6 grammars published in the 1770s.

• Identify and interpret the educational and social function of “parsing” in grammars (not as dull as it sounds).

• The role of the bookseller Thomas Cadell in grammar sales of the 1770s (any/all languages)

• Pick a non-standard grammatical variant (e.g. you was) and chart its distribution and functions in literary works of the 1770s.
  

• The distribution and function of thou and thee in novels of the 1770s

• The distribution and function of contractions in Sheridan's plays
  

Varieties of English

Language and physical identity: age, sex

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Early Lessons for Children in cultural context

• A broader study of "language issues" in children's books of the 1770s
  

Language and social identity/variation: gender

• Prescriptions for women’s English in 1770s educational texts

• Hester Thrale Piozzi's thoughts on women and languages in Thraliana

Language and geographical, ethnic, national identity

• Code-switching: standard and Scots English in Robert Fergusson’s poetry

• The origins of “Black English Vernacular”: English creole or dialect?

• Place names in a specific region of North America (or anywhere else colonized in the 1770s): English, European, and indigenous languages

• English books about India: new lexis
• Translations or representations of "Eastern" poetry

Literature

• Power and representation: how do linguistic factors influence the ways in which readers perceive events depicted in literary texts of the 1770s? You might compare and contrast Richard Cumberland's The West Indian and Samuel Foote's The Nabob

Language and contextual variation

• The titles of works of fiction in the 1770s (you may expand or focus)
  
• Contact/conflict between English and French in a region of North America (Quebec?!)
  
• French terms in English cookbooks
• The vocabulary of eighteenth-century women's fashion magazines!
  
• Language and language issues in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: terms like mother country, attitudes to foreign languages...

• Eighteenth-century biblical translation: compare with C17th and identify and analyze the differences in the context of the translators’ aims

• Patterns in book reviewers’ complaints about medical writing in the 1770s

• Terminology (English, Latin, etc.) in 1770s science: natural history, psychology (Priestley on Hartley's theory of the human mind (1776), hypnosis, physiognomy, animal magnetism), chemistry (discovery/isolation of nitrogen, oxygen, chlorine), electricity (1760s through 1780s), agriculture

• How about Joseph Priestley and the English language?
  

• Politics: pick a loaded term from a specific 1770s debate (slavery, Falklands, America): ("liberty", "patriot", "nation", "Britain"...?)

• Terminology (identify strategies for expanding the vocabulary) in an industry (first cast-iron bridge built in Shropshire, water turbine, breech-loading rifle, torpedo) around the 1770s (read Langford for ideas)

• The study and use of language by merchants and merchants’ children in the 1770s

Other languages and English

• The roles of Latin and English in C18th science

• The study of French in England in the 1770s: by women? by men? for what purpose(s)?

• Language on the Grand Tour
  

• Competition between English and other languages in international diplomacy

• The study of Latin in England in the 1770s

Word Studies

Use Chadwyck-Healey’s Literature Online: works published between 1770 and 1780:

• Grammar and grammatical (no need to narrow down)

• English (as used by female or Irish or Scottish authors)

• French (as used by female or male authors)

• Latin (as used in poetry or drama or novels by male authors)

• Accent (its several senses!)

• Speech (as used by female or Scottish authors)

• Dialect (as used by female authors, or, narrow down some other way)

• Lingo (no need to narrow down!)

• The word Public in prose by or about women (will need narrowing)