America’s Slippery Slope Into Britishisms

[enlightenment]

10. I think what you're looking for is

a history of speech language.

Elocution and rhetoric were very popular (and necessary) topics in the 19th century. The ability to speak clearly and logically was part of what made the "well made" man (leaving women out of it for now; though they also practiced these skills, they were not terribly welcome in the public sphere). I believe that people of this period had better vocabularies, over all - they did not have the varieties of visual entertainment that we do today, so the written word - be it newspapers or prose or poetry or plays - was more important.

I dug around to find you some books and discovered this website: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/hist19c/elocution.html

This link goes to the 19th century page, which gives a good overview, but the rest of the site is really informative as well. I didn't realize that speech therapy came out of this period, though it makes sense when you think about it.

You might find this book useful (a review of it here): http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/book_review_john_mcwhorters_doing_our_own_thing/

I haven't read it, but I think I shall - it looks very interesting!