Language Environment

Abstract

It is frequently claimed that Shakespeare was fortunate to live at the time he did because English was then both fluid and rich. However, this view should not be over-emphasised since it implies that he would not have become such a master of expressive English if he had lived at any other period. We should remember that there were many bad writers among his contemporaries; the age did not turn bad poets into good ones, though the language may have helped the better ones to be more expressive. Each writer of whatever period has to use the resources of the language of his time and to exploit them to his own purposes. As we shall see, Shakespeare did not exploit all features of his own contemporary language, and it is as instructive to consider what he neglected as what he developed. The linguistic environment a writer can exploit consists of the structure of his language, which in English as in other languages is continually changing, and of the attitudes that his contemporaries have towards their language. Language is a social and cultural phenomenon which is peculiarly influenced by the regard in which it is held, for those who are dissatisfied with its range of expressiveness will embark on what may be called ‘linguistic engineering’. They will attempt to correct the faults they detect in their language. The comments of contemporaries reveal what people of the time were concerned about and therefore indicate some of the pressures to which Shakespeare responded.