ABSTRACT
The era 1500-1700 is traditionally described by English historical linguists as the period of Early Modern English (EModE). The external events which determine these dates are the arrival of printing in England in 1475, and the founding of the modern British state in 1707, with the Act of Union between England, Wales and Scotland. These two events may seem of very different kinds, yet they have a cultural significance with major implications for linguistic development. Printing was adopted – and succeeded – because of the emergence of mass literacy and the consequent demands of a reading public which could not be satisfied by the old scribal system of textproduction. The Act of Union was also the prerequisite for the development of the British Empire, the primary political means by which the English language was projected beyond the British Isles to become the dominant language of late-twenty-first-century culture. The first records of English written in North America date from the EModE period.
