Language in Use

Author / Editor
Taylor, Karla.

Title
Language in Use

Published
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 99-115.

Description
Taylor surveys the development of attention to language and linguistics in Chaucer studies, commenting on the usefulness of developments that enable increased attention to sociolinguistic uses rather than philological forms. She reads RvT as a work about the "social nature and uses of linguistic difference" and characterizes the Reeve (as opposed to the Miller) as a man caught in recalcitrant "linguistic localism." She observes in Mel the "emergence of a new civic discourse in English," focusing on its use of deliberacioun and arbitracioun.

Alternative Title
Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches.

Chaucer Subjects
Language and Word Studies.
Reeve and His Tale
Miller and His Tale
Tale of Melibee