The spread of English since the late 16th century

5. Characterize the spread of English in North America and Australia with regard to the dialectal and social status of the immigrants.

• turbulent situation in 17th century England – suppression of religious dissenters → immigration
  • up to the Civil War: new middle class, better educated than average, familiar with the emerging standard
  • with the outbreak of the Civil War: poorer, less well educated people, uprooted from rural life, became part of the urban proletarian class = less affected by the written standard, but giving up their regional varieties in favour of the new spoken urban varieties (esp. London, to become GenE)
• North America
  • early settlers were the better-educated separatists and Puritans that settled in New England, and the genteel classes that were to become planters of Virginia and the Carolinas
  • new waves of immigrants: from London, the Home Counties, the North of England, Scotland, Ulster = largely speakers of non-standard general English
• Australia
  • officers in charge of the administration – closer to StE
  • transported prisoners – lower classes, non-standard English
• the contact between the various dialects, the different environment, and different native languages English came into contact with caused changes to the language → new local standards developed and spread across the territory (North America, Australia, ...)