Corpus of Early English Correspondence

The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) was compiled with historical sociolinguistics in mind. The original concept was to test how methods created by sociolinguists studying present-day languages could be applied to historical data. As the corpus yielded promising results, the research team has found many important links between language change and social variables. The application of sociolinguistic methods is made possible by an extensive database containing background information about letter writers. This database is currently being extended to cover information on letter recipients as well. A second database contains information on each letter, including data on eg authenticity in addition to sender and recipient. The CEEC is these days a cover term for a family of corpora. Work on the original CEEC began in 1993, and was completed in 1998. The versions of CEEC are available through the Oxford Text Archive.