The king's speech: metalanguage of nation, man and class in anecdotes about George III

Abstract

King George III (1738-1820) invites linguistic investigation for many reasons. He was not only the first Hanoverian monarch to have been born and raised in England, and thus to have spoken English from birth (ODNB Cannon 2004/2009), but his long reign (1760-1820) was both context and catalyst for some defining elements of the development of Later Modern English (LModE). The standardisation of English was intensifying at the beginning of his reign, with the codification of increasingly prescriptive norms (see Beal 2004: 12; Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2009: 11). Moreover, British and American linguistic norms were to diverge as one outcome of the American War of Independence (1775-83). In my association of George with these developing linguistic standards, I do not enter debates about his 'responsibility for the breach with America' (Ditchfield 2002: 119); nor will I begin debates about his linguistic influence, e.g. by interpreting corpus-based trends in his grammar or spelling. This article instead draws on contemporary anecdotes about George III, and interprets the metalanguage that constructed popular perceptions of the king's language. Common conceptions and representations of language have become the subject of great interest to sociolinguists, as they sketch a background against which language is actually used, and the specific sociocultural situations and stakes of particular ideologies (e.g. Coupland & Jaworski 2004: 36-7; Niedzielski & Preston 2000: 309). I am particularly interested in what we can infer about the ongoing standardisation of Later Modern English from the metalanguage of King and Nation, King and Individual, and King and Class. The anecdotes of course also reflect shifting public opinion of the king through the course of his reign. Upon his accession, the king himself attempted to direct metalanguage revolving around issues of nationalism: he made patriotic claims for his own Englishness as a patron of codifiers, for instance, exploiting the authenticity and authority of the newly standardising vernacular, and in such public ceremonies as his 1 For supporting this research, I'm very grateful to SSHRC (410062012) and to the University of Toronto Work-Study program. For their resourceful and assiduous research on the material I've drawn on here, I'd like to thank

German through English Eyes: A History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain 1500–2000

“…True, Johann König's A royal compleat grammar, English and German (1715) had already been dedicated to the husband of the future Queen Anne, but the fact that the House of Hanover ruled Britain from 1714-1837, did not, in Glück's view, make German and the Germans "more popular" (2002: 329). Similarly, evidence gathered by Percy (2012) suggests that George's first priority in England was English: he seems to have pressured his German bride Charlotte to learn English as swiftly as possible, beginning with their marriage ceremony in that language, a language she did not yet speak (Percy 2012: 286); English was clearly the dominant language of their children, and although they were all taught German, the King noted the Prince of Wales' imperfect study of German (Percy 2012: 290).…”

The year’s work in stylistics 2012

“…The stylistic tendencies of Late Modern English are revealed in a series of articles in a special issue of English Language and Linguistics (Beal et al, 2012). Those likely to be of particular interest to readers of Language and Literature include Nevala's (2012) analysis of social identification in Early and Late Modern English letters, Percy's (2012) Respondents were asked to rate the characters on a scale of emotional response, as well as to indicate whether they wished the character to succeed in his or her goals. The authors then analysed the results of these questionnaires statistically to generate insights into long-standing questions in literary studies such as, for example, whether literary meaning can be objectively determined.…”

“…The stylistic tendencies of Late Modern English are revealed in a series of articles in a special issue of English Language and Linguistics (Beal et al, 2012). Those likely to be of particular interest to readers of Language and Literature include Nevala’s (2012) analysis of social identification in Early and Late Modern English letters, Percy’s (2012) discussion of metalanguage in anecdotes about George III, Fens-de-Zeeuw and Straaijer’s (2012) exploration of long- s in Later Modern English manuscripts and Hundt et al’s (2012) analysis of complexity in scientific discourse. Anecdotally at least, it would appear that historians are beginning to notice the advances being made in other disciplines and seeing the value in such different approaches.…”