Modern English

     

The Origins and Development of the English Language, 6th ed., by John Algeo (Wadsworth Publishing, 2009)

Observations:

• Standardization of English
  "The early part of the modern English period saw the establishment of the standard written language that we know today. The standardization of the language was due in the first place to the need of the central government for regular procedures by which to conduct its business, to keep its records, and to communicate with the citizens of the land. Standard languages are usually the byproducts of bureaucracy . . . rather than spontaneous developments of the folk or the artifice of writers and scholars. John H. Fisher (1977, 1979) argues that standard English was first the language of the Court of Chancery, founded in the 15th century to give prompt justice to English citizens and to consolidate the King's influence in the nation. It was then taken up by early printers, who adapted it for other purposes and spread it wherever their books were read, until finally it fell into the hands of school teachers, dictionary makers, and grammarians.
  
  Inflectional and syntactical developments in this early Modern English are important, if somewhat less spectacular than the phonological ones. They continue the trend established during Middle English times that changed our grammar from a synthetic to an analytic system."
  (Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language. Harcourt, 1982)

• "The printing press, the reading habit, and all forms of communication are favorable to the spread of ideas and stimulating to the growth of the vocabulary, while these same agencies, together with social consciousness . . ., work actively toward the promotion and maintenance of a standard, especially in grammar and usage."
  (Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language. Prentice-Hall, 1978)

• The Normative Tradition
  "From its very early days, the Royal Society concerned itself with matters of language, setting up a committee in 1664 whose principal aim was to encourage the members of the Royal Society to use appropriate and correct language. This committee, however, was not to meet more than a couple of times. Subsequently, writers such as John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, and Joseph Addison, as well as Thomas Sheridan's godfather, Jonathan Swift, were each in turn to call for an English Academy to concern itself with language--and in particular to constrain what they perceived as the irregularities of usage."
  (Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, "English at the Onset of the Normative Tradition." The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford Univ. Press, 2006)

• Global English
  "As for the view of English beyond Britain, the tentative optimism of the 18th century gave way to a new view of 'global English,' an outlook in which confidence turned into triumphalism. A turning point in this emergent idea occurred in January 1851 when the great philologist Jacob Grimm declared to the Royal Academy in Berlin that English 'may be called justly a language of the world: and seems, like the English nation, to be destined to reign in future with still more extensive sway over all parts of the globe.' . . . Dozens of comments expressed this wisdom: 'The English tongue has become a rank polyglot, and is spreading over the earth like some hardy plant whose seed is sown by the wind,' as Ralcy Husted Bell wrote in 1909. Such views led to a new perspective on multilingualism: those who did not know English should set promptly about learning it!"
  (Richard W. Bailey, "English Among the Languages." The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford Univ. Press, 2006)