The large volume of literature on foreign elements in English has not been matched so far by enquiries on a comparable scale into the history of English words abroad. The disproportion is indeed so great that it is apt to give an erroneous idea of the balance sheet of linguistic debit and credit. Studies of lexicological expansion are still in their infancy; and in this particular case, the chronology and character of the process may have acted as a deterrent. England's prestige and influence began to make themselves felt at the very end of the seventeenth century and quickly reached a climax in the eighteenth. By that time, however, all Western languages had developed too far, and their speakers had become too language conscious, for the newcomer to make any lasting and decisive impression. Most Anglicisms would seem at first sight superficial, easy to detect, and without any serious problems for the student of diachronistic linguistics. Nevertheless, a synthesis is urgently required, for the late inception of the process does not lessen in any way its paramount significance in the political and cultural history of Europe, and the most tangible and accurate method devised so far for a structural analysis of such influences consists in careful scrutiny of their linguistic deposit. The general framework of such a comprehensive survey has been outlined by L. P. Smith,1 while a good deal of valuable spadework has been accomplished in French and German, and to some extent in Dutch and Italian.2 To undertake a synthesis would be therefore distinctly premature; but in French at least, sufficient data are available to attempt a piecing together of the picture.
From the Social History of the Reformation (1960-1980) to the Reformation as Communication Process (1990-2000)