A Sociolinguistic History of the English Quakers, 1650-1689

FAIN: FA-12204-78

Richard Bauman
Indiana University (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)

To write a book-length study of the sociolinguistic history of the English Quakers in the second half of the 17th century, within the conceptual framework of the ethnography of speaking, a branch of linguistic anthropology concerned with the patterns and functions of speaking in social life. The Quakers are especially well-suited to an investigation of this kind, because, like many sectarian religious groups, they were from their earliest days highly concerned with and self-conscious about the social and spiritual use of language, and widely known for certain distinctive ways of speaking.