“The Linguistic Consequences of Being a Lame” … in Medieval England

The study of ties and membership in social networks and the engagement of speakers in joint enterprises has revealed that common practices can be sociolinguistically indexical and consciously used in constructing and projecting social identity. In fact, the nuclear or peripheral position of members in peer-group activity has been shown to strongly condition their relative sociolinguistic behaviour. The aim of this article is the exploration of individuals’ membership status through their linguistic production in late medieval England, when the conception of a national linguistic variety of English was emerging. An analysis of was- and were-levelling processes in the past tense conjugation of be is carried out on the collection of private correspondence of the Paston family, written during the fifteenth century (1425-1503) by different generations of this gentry dynasty from Norfolk. The study of the sociolinguistic behavioural patterns for this variable in the letters provides us with a new in-group dimension for core members and “lames” on the basis of their shared verbal practices and networks, employed to preserve the values of the group and its identity within the community. In the context of loose-knit social networks with weak ties, some linguistic choices may tend to transmit adherence to a focused variety and become a trend for imitation. However, isolated members may perfectly happily persist in adhering to vernacular practices, and as such occupy a less crucial position in terms of the diffusion of linguistic innovations within the community.