ABSTRACT
In this final chapter, we look at some of the major phenomena surrounding English usage from the eighteenth century onwards. The developments of the eighteenth century which typically, and justifiably, receive the most attention in histories of English are those which contributed to the standardization of the language. We will pursue this ourselves in Section 6.2, but it is notable that one of the other major developments of this period (and indeed, in some ways, a contributory factor to calls for standardization) was the establishment of English as a significant language throughout the Empire. This global expansion continued throughout the nineteenth century: in the 1800s, for example, English was referred to as the ‘language of administration’ for a staggering one-third of the world's population (Graddol, 1997: 11), and as a result of the Industrial Revolution (which ultimately triggered a ‘global restructuring of work and leisure’ (ibid.: 7)), would become established internationally as the language of advertising and consumerism.
