"To Heare It by Mouth": Speech and Accent in Early Modern Language Learning

The language-learning texts of the early modern period were intimately concerned with questions of orality and the sound of speech. This essay begins by looking at methods of representing and teaching pronunciation in vernacular language manuals of the period from 1480 to 1715, to see how authors attempted to bridge the gap between print and speech, and how readers modified their manuals to make them more usable in oral contexts. Recognizing, as early modern authors and teachers did, that there is a limit to print's ability to communicate the sound of speech, this essay then unpicks the new reading practices that activated the oral materials found in these manuals. Lastly, it shows how in an increasingly competitive educational market, manuals came to stand for the voices of their authors and to make claims for their pedagogical authority that were vocal in every sense.