This dissertation focuses on gender-related terms as well as adjectives and demonstratives in connection with these terms used in texts from the period 1670–1720. The material in the study has been drawn from both English and American sources and comes from three text categories: depositions, examinations and journals. Two of these text categories represent authentic and speech-related language use (depositions and examinations), whereas the third (journals) is representative of a non-speech-related, non-fictional text category. While previous studies of gender-related terms have primarily investigated fictional material, this study focuses on text categories which have received little attention so far. The overarching research question addressed in this study concerns the use and distribution of gender-related terms, especially with regard to referent gender. Data analyses are both quantitative and qualitative, and several linguistic and extra-linguistic factors are taken into account, such as the semantic domain to which the individual gender-related term belongs, region of origin and referent gender. Adjectives and demonstratives collocating with the gender-related terms are also investigated, as previous research has shown that referent gender has an impact on the use of adjectives as well. The results show that the use of gender-related terms is influenced by both region of origin and referent gender. It is suggested that this is due in part to the difference in nature between Early Modern English society and the early American colonies, and in part due to the social roles which men and women had. Referent gender also has an impact on the type of adjectives used in connection with gender-related terms: adjectives collocating with gender-related terms denoting men have positive connotations to a larger extent than do adjectives collocating with their female counterparts; meanwhile, gender-related terms denoting women tend to collocate with negative adjectives.

The present project set out to explore whether or not the members of one of the most powerful families in history functioned as agents of language change. Using the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC), the present project examines and discusses linguistic conservatism and innovation in relation to the historical movement towards a Standard English. This is done by scrutinising six members of the house of Stewart that can be found in the PCEEC following theories and frameworks pertaining to the scientific discipline of sociohistorical linguistics. The findings of the present study suggest that the house of Stewart appears to have been in the vanguard of language change in several respects.

Réalisée à partir d’archives diplomatiques, cette thèse propose une lecture de l’histoire de l’enseignement du français en Palestine depuis le point de vue diplomatique. Elle propose d’étudier les objectifs politiques et symboliques qui ont guidé l’évolution de ce réseau d’enseignement du français. A la croisée de questionnements communs à la didactique du français langue étrangère et à la sociolinguistique, il s’agit de s’intéresser aux conceptions de la langue et de l’altérité sous-jacentes à la politique de diffusion du français. La thèse s’attache également à caractériser les politiques de diffusion du français dans un espace particulier : la Palestine. Ces questionnements permettent de formuler une certaine continuité dans le type de relations entretenues à travers l’enseignement du français et de poser la question de ce que serait non plus une politique de diffusion mais une politique de l’appropriation. / Based upon the interpretation of diplomatic archives, this doctoral thesis presents an understanding of the history of French language teaching in Palestine, from the diplomatic point of view. It aims at studying the political and symbolical goals guiding the evolution of the French teaching network. At the crossroads of issues common to the fields of French as a second language and sociolinguistics, it will focus on the conceptions of language and of alterity underlying the French language spread policy. The thesis also seeks to characterize language planning policy in a specific territory: Palestine. Those questions allow us to formulate the hypothesis of continuity in the type of relationships established through French language teaching and to put in perspective the spreading policy with an appropriation policy.

The study of early cross-linguistic diplomatic epistolography was first introduced in Brownlees' (2012) comparative study of Italian and English personal newsletters. Given the field’s young age and the strong need for both further research and the retrieving of new, untranscribed and unanalysed data, the present study set out to help move this field forward by examining, at both a textual superstructure and semantic macrostructural level, two sets of unchartered diplomatic newsletters which representatives at foreign courts despatched back to their respective home countries. The first set of original manuscripts comprises periodical newsletters which Baron Christer Bonde, the Swedish ambassador-extraordinary to England, wrote to Charles X, King of Sweden, between 1655-6, whereas the second set consists of letters sent in 1680 by John Robinson, England’s chargé d’affaires in Sweden, to Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State for the Northern Department of England. The analysis has shown that whereas the textual superstructures of the two diplomats’ correspondences remain similarly robust, the instantiating semantic macrostructures display not only stylistic and compositional, but also narrative, variation.

The aim of the present study has been to investigate how titles of social rank used in Tudor and Stuart England are modified by attributive adjectives in pre-adjacent position and the implications that become possible to observe. Using the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) the present work set out to examine adjectival modification, gender perspectives and MI (Mutual Information) scores in order to gain a deeper understanding of how and why titles were modified in certain ways. The titles under scrutiny are Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Madam, Master and Mistress and these have been analysed following theories and frameworks pertaining to the scientific discipline of sociohistorical linguistics.    The findings of the present study suggest that male titles were modified more frequently than, and differently from, female titles. The adjectives used as pre-modifiers, in turn, stem from different semantic domains which reveals differences in attitudes from the language producers towards the referents and in what traits are described regarding the holders of the titles. Additionally, a type/token ratio investigation reveals that the language producers were keener on using a more varied vocabulary when modifying female titles and less so when modifying male titles. The male terms proved to be used more formulaically than the female terms, as well. Lastly, an analysis of MI scores concludes that the most frequent collocations are not necessarily the most relevant ones.    A discussion regarding similarities and differences to other studies is carried out, as well, which, further, is accompanied by suggestions for future research.

This thesis aims to explore an aspect of the history of vernacular speech through analysis of some eighteenth century verse texts. These satirical anti-Jesuit pamphlets by Nicolas Jouin, known as the 'Sarcelades', were collected posthumously in 'Le Vrai Recueil des Sarcelles' of 1764. The texts purport to be in the patois of the peasants of Sarcelles and show features which may be paralleled in the vernacular speech of Paris and elsewhere, and even correspond with features of contemporary colloquial French. The study may appeal to French historical sociolinguists interested in reconstructing spoken language of the past, and particularly in the history of vernacular speech of Paris since the Middle Ages through to the eighteenth century, in the context of the development of urban dialects. In order to set the scene for a linguistic description of Jouin’s work the limited biographical information available was collated. Then a period of bibliographical research led to acquisition of copies of the texts which were to be studied in order to identify and examine their non-standard linguistic features. Firstly the process of growth of urban dialects was discussed, and then the development of the Paris vernacular in particular. Then attention was turned to direct written evidence in the form of commentary and to a number of texts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries containing features of the Paris vernacular. These had already been analysed by certain historical linguists, although the texts in the 'Sarcelades' had hitherto only been briefly mentioned. However, here they are considered to be of sufficient interest to be examined more closely, although it had to be established whether Jouin’s texts containing a selection of non-standard features could be regarded as an accurate depiction of the Paris vernacular at the period. The non-standard phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features in the texts were therefore compared with findings in other texts by previous commentators. Following these analyses it was noted to what extent the relative frequency of the variables correlates with the salience of certain features in popular speech in Paris at the period, as already observed in other texts by previous commentators, and it was concluded that in general established characteristics of the 'patois de Paris' at the period are to be found in the 'Sarcelades', even though there do remain certain features which do not appear to be generally attested elsewhere. Nevertheless, despite reservations concerning the authenticity of some of the non-standard features employed by Jouin, by bringing attention to this little-known series of texts this study may help to claim a place for the Sarcelades amongst the corpus of texts which reflect aspects of the lower-class sociolect, the 'patois de Paris', at the period.