A Note on Texts and Letter Forms Preface to the Revised Edition Introduction: Finding English, Finding Us 1. Caedmon Learns to Sing: Old English and the Origins of Poetry 2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan: The Language of Old English Literature 3. In This Year: The Politics of Language and the End of Old English 4. From Kingdom to Realm: Middle English in a French World 5. Lord of This Langage: Chaucer's English 6. I Is as Ille as a Millere Are Ye: Middle English Dialects 7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English 8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose 9. I Do, I Will: Shakespeare's English 10. A Universal Hubbub Wild: New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English 11. Visible Speech: The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English 12. A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary 13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas: Lexicography and Literature in American English 14. Antses in the Sugar: Dialect and Regionalism in American English 15. Hello, Dude: Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom 16. Ready for the Funk: African American English and Its Impact 17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest: The Oxford English Dictionary and Its Readers 18. Listening to Private Ryan: War and Language 19. He Speaks in Your Voice: Everybody's English 20. Faith in English: Vernacular Devotion and Biblical Translation Epilogue: The Talk and the Text Appendix: English Sounds and Their Representation Glossary References and Further Reading Acknowledgments Acknowledgments to the Revised Edition Index