The Art of Dying: Making a Will in Old English and Its Sociolinguistic Context
The Art of Dying: Making a Will in Old English and Its Sociolinguistic Context

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the potential of legal documents for the study of the sociology of Old English. It gives a rationale for the use of legal genres, or charters, and introduces research databases and tools that may elucidate the interconnections between practitioners of legal Old English and their linguistic practices. A series of short case studies on wills illustrates what legal genres tell us about the correlation between linguistic variation, supralocalisation, and change and such variables as archive and gender.

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