Shakespeare's Language: Revealing Meanings and Exploring Myths

Debunk and discover common myths surrounding the language of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is a global phenomenon, yet there is actually relatively little work specifically devoted to his language, and even less deploying the latest techniques from linguistics.

On this course, you will explore Shakespeare’s language and, more generally, the language of his time.

Over four weeks, you will be introduced to “big data” corpus methods (methods that use computers to explore large volumes of language data) which you can use for your own investigations, and will explore how words and meanings pattern across plays, characters, and more.

Along the way, you will find out why various beliefs about Shakespeare’s life and language–like that he coined an extraordinary number of new words–are actually myths.

This course is for anyone interested in Shakespeare, language, and corpus linguistics. This includes English or literature teachers and students.

To fully engage with this course, you will need to sign up to use an external tool called CQPWeb provided by Lancaster University. Details of how to do this will be provided during the course.

• A strange tongue
• Introductions
• Shakespeare's language and its linguistic context
• Shakespeare's linguistic backdrop: Words
• Shakespeare's linguistic backdrop: Nouns and pronouns
• Shakespeare's linguistic backdrop: Verbs (and adjectives and adverbs)
• Shakespeare's linguistic backdrop: Sentences
• Round-up
• New-found methods
• Week 1 recap
• Accessing Shakespeare
• From Early modern printing to digital texts
• Big data: Mining the language surrounding Shakespeare
• Shakespearean dictionaries
• Using CQPweb
• Exploring meanings in Shakespeare
• Round-up
• Mistake the truth
• Week 2 Recap
• Counting language
• The big myth: Shakespeare's Neologisms
• More on using CQPweb
• Other myths about Shakespeare's language
• Round-up
• This bigger key
• Week 3 Recap
• Keywords and characters
• Yet more on using CQPweb
• Keywords and plays
• Wrapping-up