The studies in this volume cover various aspects of the study of multilingualism and language variation in English across genres and registers, as well as across centuries.

This introductory chapter sets the scene for the contributions to this volume which are all focused on the analysis of self- and other-reference in social contexts. In this chapter, we provide an overview of previous approaches to reference and context, offering a foundation on which the following studies will build. The focus is on the study of self- and other-reference that is constructed or represented in various social contexts through specific markers, such as personal pronouns, or other referential expressions. This chapter also provides an introduction to the theoretical and methodological approaches of the chapters.

Abstract This introductory chapter sets the scene for the contributions to this volume which are all focused on the analysis of self- and other-reference in social contexts. In this chapter, we provide an overview of previous approaches to reference and context, offering a foundation on which the following studies will build. The focus is on the study of self- and other-reference that is constructed or represented in various social contexts through specific markers, such as personal pronouns, or other referential expressions. This chapter also provides an introduction to the theoretical and methodological approaches of the chapters.

OECD reports a mismatch between field of study and job content for Humanities students, while at the same time signalling labour market shortages for skills that seem clearly linked with the Humanities, e.g. delivering information. In order to investigate which skills Humanities students associate with their university studies, we conducted a survey among 1306 European Humanities and 231 non-Humanities students. The survey asked these students whether they felt they acquired skills during their Humanities university education which were identified in a pilot phase. The students’ answers were analysed quantitatively, arriving at a Humanities self-perception skills profile of 70 detailed descriptions of skills that fall under six clusters. We argue that this profile could be a crucial step to improve the employability of Humanities students, as students’ perceptions of their skills greatly determine the quality of transition to the labour market.

Abstract This chapter explores how societal democratisation can be studied by using linguistic big data. More specifically, we are interested in establishing whether it is possible to see how the gradual democratisation of society affected the employment relationship in nineteenth-century Britain by examining changes in the frequency of constructions where different referential terms for both employers and employees were used in the British parliament. We pay particular attention to the gradual waning of the master–servant institution, whose demise can be directly linked to the increased independence of labourers from their employers. We will also briefly explore how data anomalies or outliers can potentially be used as a heuristic when identifying events of historical interest and importance.

The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension Sampler part 1 (CEECES 1) is the first public release from the 18th-century part of the Corpora of Early English Correspondence (CEEC-400). The CEECES 1 forms one part of the full CEECES. The other parts, both released 11 April 2022, are the CEECES part 2 and the TCEECES. The CEECES 1 was originally released in April 2021; this new version (11 April 2022) contains the exact same data (corpus files and supporting metadata), only the new zip file has been cleaned of macOS metafiles (__MACOSX and .DS_Store files), the manual has been updated, the metadata is now provided as a tsv file and a MS Excel file, and a key to the metadata has been included in the bundle. See the accompanying manual for more information on the CEECES 1; see the manuals for the CEECES 2 and the TCEECES for more information on the CEECES. See https://varieng.helsinki.fi/CoRD/corpora/CEEC/ for more on the CEEC-400. Citation: CEECES 1 = Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension Sampler part 1. Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Samuli Kaislaniemi, Mikko Laitinen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin, Tanja Säily and Anni Sairio at the Department of Languages, University of Helsinki. XML conversion and encoding by Lassi Saario. Helsinki: VARIENG, 2021. Version history: 1.4.2021 Version 1 – First release of corpus texts, metadata, and manual. 11.4.2022 Version 2 – Second release, to coincide with the release of CEECES 2 and TCEECES. Zip file cleaned, manual updated.

This article explores the interrelatedness of societal changes and changes in language practices. By using a combination of corpus linguistic and socio-pragmatic methods, we track diachronic changes in word patterns and interpret findings in the framework of democratization. The data comes from a small and representative corpus of British English (ARCHER-3.1) and from three “big data” sets (Google Books, British Library Newspapers and The Economist). We suggest that data triangulation, including sociohistorical contextualization, allows us to conclude that especially from the mid-nineteenth century onwards words signaling social status and referring to individuals have decreased and from the first decades of the twentieth century onwards words referring to collectivities of people have increased.

In this chapter we discuss the current achievements of historical sociolinguistics and highlight new insights provided by the contributions in the volume. Taking the essay by Nevalainen (2015) as a starting point, we consider the themes of crossing boundaries and bridging gaps between different levels of analysis and different paradigms, as well as proposing new paths for historical sociolinguistics as part of the wider field of digital humanities.

Abstract This chapter discusses the long diachrony of English news discourse from seventeenth-century newsbooks to the twentieth century and the dawn of multimedia. We shall place news discourse in its context of sociocultural developments considering what might be diachronically constant and what prone to change. The data available for studies on news discourse as well as the potential for interdisciplinary study methods at various interfaces will be highlighted between sociolinguistics, journalism, semiotics, literary theory, critical discourse analysis, pragmatics and sociology.

This paper explores the construction of the defendant role in the trial proceedings of the Old Bailey Corpus, 1720‐1913. The aim is to find out how defendants position themselves discursively in the courtroom and in relation to the crime they are accused of. With keyword, phrase frame and cluster tools we map linguistic patterns comparing them in time and between men and women. The usage of two keywords innocent and guilty are analysed more closely in context as they explicitly position the defendant in relation to the charges. The analyses highlight various aspects of the defendant role construction on different levels of granularity and link findings to the changing context of the courtroom and the judicial system.

ENDNOTES 1 The author uses the 2000 English version. 2 The song belongs to the record Arrotaste no meu olvido (You burped on my oblivon, in Portuguese except the word ‘oblivion,’ which is in Spanish), 2002.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cuhf26BRBEhttps://www.facebook. com/Trabuco-Naranjero-154929844599491/ 3 This is not a transcription; the lyrics were taken from a web page that doesn't exist anyore, on 5 May 2002: http:// www.trabuconaranjero.hpg.ig.com.br/aguanteportunol/htmlThe writing choices show a Spanish pronunciation of a nonstandard variety of Portuguese.

The inclusion of advertisers, audiences and other persons, i.e. person-mention,in late 18th- and early 19th-century English advertisements is a salient featureof advertising style. As person-mention decreases during the century, this studyexplores how the change progresses from 1785 to 1880 in two London newspapers,The Times and The Morning Post, and what functions person-mentionserves. The results show that person-mention established an interpersonalrelationship where the advertiser attended to the needs of the audience, buttowards the end of the century the advertiser-audience dyad lost its importanceas a persuasive strategy and advertisements focused on the products only. Tounderstand these linguistic changes, the genre is discussed in the context of19th-century sociocultural changes, employing an integrationist sociologicalmodel.

Abstract One of the relatively new approaches to understanding the history of the English language is to look at language as a social practice. In recent years, there has been increasing attention to linguistic construction of social roles and identities in earlier periods as well as the role of networks in language change and variation. According to this approach, language is connected to its users and to what they do with language in specific situations and socio-historical contexts within the confines of their linguistic repertoires. This article investigates the contextualization of language users in the history of English based on the idea that identities and social roles are time and place specific constructs that can be analyzed, for example, in networks. It considers solutions that are needed to systematize historical sociolinguistic research, including corpus methods. The article concludes by analyzing styles of self-reference in order to understand identity construction in Early Modern English with possible links to broader sociocultural changes.