Quaker Plain Speech
A Policy of Linguistic Divergence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4178781 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Barbara M Birch (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 1995-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of the Sociology of Language (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0165-2516 • E-ISSN: 1613-3668 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/ijsl.1995.116.39 |
| OpenAlex | W2031053108 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
When the Singular pronoun thou began to lose ground in the 1600s in Standard English, there was one group ofnonconformists, the Quakers, who resisted this change and initiated a policy of linguistic divergence called Quaker Plain Speech. Quaker Plain Speech wasfoundedon a contradiction between the inclusive aims of the policy and the inherently exclusive nature of linguistic divergence. After the first flush of missionary zeal Quaker Plain Speech lapsed into a barrier reinforcing Quakers as a group and excluding Outsiders. In the late nineteenth Century, at a time oflow ethnolinguistic vitality, most Quakers gave up their characteristic speech marker as an accommodation to the mainstream culture. However, Quaker Plain Speech continues to be used among some Quaker families for reasons of tradition, intimacy, and Community. It has a symbolic meaning ofrejection of mainstream values and priorities. The contradiction between inclusivity and exclusivity has still not been resolved
Common ground · Contempt · Contradiction · Epistemology · Linguistics · Mainstream · Political science · Sociology · Speech community · Theology · Thou · Vitality · Communication · Gender Studies in Language · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.19 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2024 (20) |
| Highly cited | No |