History of the English Language, 2nd Edition

Overview

Investigate the remarkable history of English, from the powerful prose of King Alfred in the Middle Ages to the modern-day sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, San Diego.

Course No. 2250

This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope and designed to give you greater insight into the written and spoken word.

The lectures provide a thorough understanding of the history of the English language—from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples through the literary and cultural documents of its 1,500-year span to the state of American speech today. Professor Lerer defines concepts by illustrating them with copious examples. He often speaks in the dialect appropriate to each lecture—be it Old English, Chaucer’s Middle English, or the colloquial style of Mark Twain’s most unforgettable characters.

Video Lectures

1. Introduction to the Study of Language (32 min)
2. The Historical Study of Language (30 min)
3. Indo-European and the Prehistory of English (28 min)
4. Reconstructing Meaning and Sound (30 min)
5. Historical Linguistics and Studying Culture (30 min)
6. The Beginnings of English (30 min)
7. The Old English Worldview (30 min)
8. Did the Normans Really Conquer English? (30 min)
9. What Did the Normans Do to English? (30 min)
10. Chaucer’s English (30 min)
11. Dialect Representations in Middle English (30 min)
12. Medieval Attitudes toward Language (30 min)
13. The Return of English as a Standard (31 min)
14. The Great Vowel Shift and Modern English (30 min)
15. The Expanding English Vocabulary (30 min)
16. Early Modern English Syntax and Grammar (29 min)
17. Renaissance Attitudes toward Teaching English (31 min)
18. Shakespeare—Drama, Grammar, Pronunciation (30 min)
19. Shakespeare—Poetry, Sound, Sense (31 min)
20. The Bible in English (30 min)
21. Samuel Johnson and His Dictionary (31 min)
22. New Standards in English (30 min)
23. Dictionaries and Word Histories (32 min)
24. Values, Words, and Modernity (32 min)
25. The Beginnings of American English (32 min)
26. American Language from Webster to Mencken (31 min)
27. American Rhetoric from Jefferson to Lincoln (31 min)
28. The Language of the American Self (30 min)
29. American Regionalism (30 min)
30. American Dialects in Literature (31 min)
31. The Impact of African-American English (33 min)
32. An Anglophone World (32 min)
33. The Language of Science (32 min)
34. The Science of Language (30 min)
35. Linguistics and Politics in Language Study (30 min)
36. Conclusions and Provocations (30 min)