Communities of Practice in the History of English -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Preface -- Communities of practice as a locus of language change -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Community frameworks in (historical) linguistics -- 3. Communities of practice in historical linguistics -- 4. Chapter overview -- 4.1 Letter writers -- 4.2 Scribes and printers -- 4.3 Professionals -- Notes -- References -- I. Letter writers -- The role of communities of practice in the emergence of Scottish Standard English -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The prestige language in eighteenth century Scotland -- 3. The Select Society of Edinburgh -- 4. The lists of Scotticisms -- 5. Lord Fife and his factors -- 6. The Fife-Rose Corpus -- 7. Fife's background -- 8. Scotticisms in the Fife-Rose Corpus -- 9. Topic-driven use of Scotticisms -- 10. Fife's bilingualism -- 11. Fife's pragmatic use of Scots -- 12. Fife's language and the emergence of Scottish Standard English -- Notes -- References -- Mixing genres and reinforcing community ties in nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence -- 1. Introduction and corpus description -- 1.1 Register and dialect in personal letters -- 2. Religious references in familiar letters -- 2.1 Crystallized expressions in opening and closing formulae -- 2.2 Religious references in the body of the letter -- 3. Religious references in business letters -- 4. Concluding remarks -- Notes -- References -- Appendix -- Communities of practice, idiolects, and community grammar -- 1. Introductory remarks -- 2. Corpus structure -- 3. Background information -- 4. Results and discussion -- 4.1 Distribution of was and were as dependent on subject type -- 4.2 Communities of practice, individual and community grammar(s) -- 5. Community grammar and conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References.

Community or communities of practice? 1820 petitioners in the Cape Colony -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Data -- 1.2 Outline -- 2. Mr. John Bold's written requests -- 3. Petitioning as an everyday practice -- 3.1 Genre -- 3.2 Genre shifts and self-presentation -- 4. Community of practice -- 4.1 Periphery and core: experts and learners -- 4.2 Two communities? -- 5. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- II. Scribes and printers -- Crafting text languages: Spelling systems in manuscripts of the "Man of Law's Tale" -- 1. Setting the scene: The community of book artisans in medieval London -- 2. Community within a community: Middle English scribes -- 3. Communio scriptorum as a community of practice -- 4. Individuality in community: Scribal responses to exemplar copies -- 5. The community of the "Man of Law's Tale" scribes -- 6. Negotiating the meaning of the littera: Potestatic representations in MLT MSS -- 6.1 Litterae representing potestas /ʃ/ -- 6.2 Litterae representing potestas /x/ -- 7. What's in a symbol? Abbreviations in the MLT MSS -- 7.1 Superscript 'i' -- 7.2 Brevigraph -- 8. Conclusion: Crafting text languages as a means of establishing community of practice -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Typographical and graphomorphemic features of five editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Community of practice: Theoretical assumptions -- 3. Early modern printers as a community of practice -- 4. The Kalender of Shepherdes: Printers' joint enterprise and shared repertoire -- 4.1 Collaborative relationships among the printers -- 4.2 Typographical features in the KS editions as part of printers' shared repertoire of resources -- 4.3 Abbreviations as printers' typographical tool for line justification -- 5. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Appendix.

Printing houses as communities of practice: Orthography in early modern medical books -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background: Communities of practice -- 2.1 Early modern medical writers -- 2.2 Early modern printers -- 3. Orthographic standardization and printing -- 4. Data -- 4.1 Spelling and annotation in EMEMT -- 4.2 VARDing -- 5. Findings -- 5.1 Pre-standard spellings -- 5.2 Brevigraphs and macrons -- 6. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Elizabeth Montagu's Shakespeare essay (1769): The final draft and the first edition -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Two communities of practice -- 2.1 Elizabeth Montagu and the essay -- 2.2 The first edition and printing house practices -- 3. The draft of the essay -- 4. Linguistic variation between the draft and the edition -- 4.1 Spelling -- 4.2 Punctuation -- 4.3 Capitalization -- 5. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- III. Professionals -- Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: Bilingual communities of practice in Anglo-Saxon England -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Dictionary evidence and previous research -- 3. Corpus evidence -- 3.1 Anglo-Latin -- 3.2 Old English -- 4. Conclusions and suggestions -- Notes -- References -- Appendix 1 -- How a community of practice creates text community: Middle Scots legal and administrative discourse -- 1. Setting the context -- 2. Notaries and clerks as a community of practice -- 3. Tracing fixed patterns in Middle Scots legal and administrative texts -- 4. Medieval Scottish burghs as text communities -- 5. Accessing the text community through lexical bundles -- 5.1 The authorities and the community -- 5.2 Collective reference -- 5.3 Heirs and will executors -- 5.4 Named individuals -- 5.5 Other individuals -- 6. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Early Modern English community of medical practitioners -- 1. Introduction.

2. Communities of Practice as a framework for historical research -- 3. Communities of Practice and their written legacy -- 4. The theory of four humors by Galen -- 5. Corpus linguistic analysis of the language of physicians and surgeons -- 6. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- The formation of the Royal Society as a community of practice and discourse -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Royal Society as a community of practice -- 2.1 Composition -- 2.2 Network -- 3. The Royal Society as a community of discourse -- 3.1 Linguistic conventions -- 3.2 Stylistic conventions -- 3.3 Generic conventions -- 4. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Index of names -- Index of subjects.