The history of the English language
(Audiobook CD)

pt. 1: lecture 1. Introduction to the study of language ; lecture 2. The historic study of language, methods and approaches ; lecture 3. The prehistory of English, the Indo-European context ; lecture 4. Reconstructing meaning and sound ; lecture 5. Words and worlds, historical linguistics and the study of culture ; lecture 6. The beginnings of English ; lecture 7. Old English, the Anglo-Saxon worldview ; lecture 8. Changing language, did the Normans really conquer English? ; lecture 9. Conquering language, what did the Normans do to English? ; lecture 10. Chaucer's English ; lecture 11. Dialect jokes and literary representation in Middle English ; lecture 12. A multilingual world, medieval attitudes toward language change and variation

pt. 2: lecture 13. The return of English as a standard ; lecture 14. How we speak, the great vowel shift and the making of modern English ; lecture 15. What we say, the expanding English vocabulary ; lecture 16. The shape of modern English, changes in syntax and grammar ; lecture 17. Renaissance attitudes toward teaching English ; lecture 18. The language of Shakespeare (1), drama, grammar, and pronunciation ; lecture 19. The language of Shakespeare (2), poetry, sound, and sense ; lecture 20. The Bible in English ; lecture 21. Samuel Johnson and his Dictionary ; lecture 22. New standards in English ; lecture 23. Semantic change, dictionaries and the histories of words ; lecture 24. Values and words in the 19th and 20th Centuries

pt. 3: lecture 25. The beginnings of American English ; lecture 26. Making the American language, from Noah Webster to H.L. Mencken ; lecture 27. The rhetoric of independence from Jefferson to Lincoln ; lecture 28. The language of the American self ; lecture 29. American regionalism ; lecture 30. American dialects in literature ; lecture 31. The impact of African-American English ; lecture 32. An Anglophone world ; lecture 33. The language of science, the changing nature of 20th century English ; lecture 34. The science of language, the study of language in the 20th century ; lecture 35. Modern linguistics and the politics of language study ; lecture 36. Conclusions and provocations.