William Abberley

School: College of Humanities
Department: English

My research thesis "Science and Philology in Fiction 1850-1914" considers ideas in Victorian and Edwardian popular writing of where language came from and where it was going. Enthusiasm for progressive change jars with concern for preserving or reconnecting with the past. Both urges, however, resisted the autonomy and arbitrariness in language which philology and early linguistics were beginning to reveal. Nineteenth-century philology presented languages as naturally transformative, altering through time like rock formations. If their natural state was to change, could society temper or influence the direction of this change and, if so, what kind of change was desirable? Popular fiction of the proceeding decades embodied these tensions, both potentially part of a clerisy which directed language for the greater good, or mass culture undermining such authority. As science offered new views of the relationship between body and consciousness, philology did likewise to ideas of nature and culture, heritage and nation.

You can read more about the project here.

You can read about the latest developments in my research, and how they relate to attitudes to language change today on my blog Evolution and Language in Literature.

I teach undergraduate seminars on Critical Theory in the Department of English.

I have a first class BA Hons in English Language and Literature from Pembroke College, University of Oxford and an MA with distinction in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Sheffield.

I have also worked for several years as a professional journalist in print and radio.