“Branded on the Tongue”

Abstract

The laboring population of early modern England (ca. 1550–1750) has long been characterized as “inarticulate”—by contemporary elites and historians alike. This article uses transcribed linguistic exchanges between lower-class speakers and their social superiors—especially those that occurred in the context of the criminal justice system—to reconsider the causes and consequences of plebeian inarticulacy during the period, and beyond. It suggests that certain varieties of inarticulacy—including stammering—should be understood in relation to the radically hierarchical social structure of early modern England and the particular forms of subordination and deference that it demanded of and engendered in lower-class individuals. This allows for a reconsideration of the relationship between language and class as well as the role of quotidian subordinate-superior exchanges in reproducing socioeconomic and political inequality.

The price of the poor's words: social relations and the economics of deposing for one's ‘betters’ in early modern England

“…For reluctant witnesses having physio‐psychological difficulties when they deposed, see TNA, STAC 5/A45/11; STAC 5/F6/11; STAC 8/239/18. For stammering and social relations, see Taylor, ‘“Branded on the tongue”’.…”

Troubling agency: agency and charity in early nineteenth-century London

“…111 Hillary Taylor suggested that, in their quest for hidden transcripts of rebellion, historians overlook the possibility that people's outer conduct and inner state might be in alignment. 112 Behaving submissively could, in fact, reflect an inner feeling of subordination.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2015

“…Taken together with Williamson and Southard's essay we get the impression of a vibrant and conflicted seventeenth‐century political culture that involved debate and disagreement across the social scale and extended either side of the Civil War years into both local and national politics—and was often centred on forms of middling sociability. Taylor's attention is focused more on the plebeian than the middling, but the emphasis here is not on sedition as a ‘weapon of the weak’ but on the theme of plebeian inarticulacy which is seen as an important facet of subordination in this highly unequal society. Social and economic polarization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a pejorative characterization of plebeian speech that reinforced a sense of inferiority, something Taylor sees reflected in the difficulty many plebeians had when trying to speak in the Old Bailey.…”