Merja Riitta Stenroos

Professor

Merja Riitta Stenroos

Contact

Telephone: 51831365

Email: merja.stenroos@uis.no

Room: HL A-239A

Department

Faculty of Arts and Education

Department of Cultural Studies and Languages

About me

I am Professor of English Linguistics at the Department of Cultural Studies and Languages, University of Stavanger. 

I studied English Language and Celtic at the University of Glasgow, and wrote my PhD thesis on the medieval dialect of Herefordshire (1997). Before that, a very long time ago, I worked as a writer and journalist in Finland.

Over the years, I have been so fortunate as to lead three large research projects, the first two of which each resulted in a corpus of late medieval English texts: The Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) and A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD). The MELD project also resulted in a book volume, Records of Real People: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents (ed. Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs, John Benjamins, 2020). I have supervised several PhD students and have led a Middle English research group (of varying size over the years) at the University of Stavanger continuously since 2006.

From January 2025, I am leading an ERC-funded project, Linguistic Traces: low-frequency forms as a source of language and population history (LiTra).

Most of my research has focussed on pre-Reformation English, although I have taught and supervised all periods. I am particularly interested in perspectives such as: geographical variation, language contact, historical pragmatics, the use of pronouns, variable writing systems, the sound-spelling interface, literacy and visual grammar, and the social contexts of medieval texts and scribes. I very much enjoy working with a research team, and I believe in combining linguistics with a large helping of philology.

In 2022-23 I spent a year as a Core Fellow in the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. 

Publications

Vitenskapelige publikasjoner

Stenroos, Merja

(2024)

Strange spellings and prodigal scribes : xall and xe in late medieval English. I: Spelling Identities : Individual Orthographic Usages in English, Nordic and Constructed Languages.

Reichert Verlag.

ISBN 9783752006896.

s.33-51.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2024)

Nu is þeo Leore For-Leten: Conventionality, Complexity and Substitution Sets in Historical English Spelling.

SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature.

ISSN 1132-631X.

Volum 29.

Hefte 1.

s.109-125.

DOI: 10.17811/selim.29.2024.109-125

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2021)

What if anything are Middle English dialects : Some thoughts on a changing concept. I: Current Issues in Medieval England.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

ISBN 978-3-631-86295-7.

s.217-244.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Schipor, Delia

(2020)

Multilingual practices in Middle English documents. I: Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

s.249-277.

DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.11ste

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2020)

Local documents as source material for the study of late medieval English. I: Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

s.3-21.

DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.01ste

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Bergstrøm, Geir; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2020)

The categorization of Middle English documents : interactions of function form and language. I: Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

s.38-67.

DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.03ste

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2020)

The geography of Middle English documentary texts. I: Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

s.70-92.

DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.04ste

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2020)

Land documents as a source of word geography. I: Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

s.176-202.

DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.08ste

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2019)

Langage o northrin lede: northern Middle English as a written medium. I: Revisiting the medieval North of England.

University of Wales Press.

ISBN 9781786833945.

s.44-63.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2019)

The development of Old English eo/eo and the systematicity of Middle English spelling. I: Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age.

Edinburgh University Press.

ISBN 9781474430531.

s.133-155.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2017)

Perspectives on geographical variation. I: English historical linguistics: approaches and perspectives.

Cambridge University Press.

ISBN 978-1107113640.

s.303-331.

DOI: 10.1017/9781316286562.012

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Smith, Jeremy J.

(2016)

Changing functions: English spelling before 1600. I: The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System.

Routledge.

ISBN 978-0-415-71597-3.

s.125-142.

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

Fugitive voices: personal involvement in Middle English letters of defence. I: 'Ye whom the charms of grammar please': Studies in English Language History in Honour of Leiv Egil Breivik.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

ISBN 9783034317795.

s.355-380.

Stenroos, Merja

(2013)

Identity and intelligibility in Late Middle English scribal transmission: local dialect as an active choice in fifteenth-century texts. I: Scribes as agents of language change.

De Gruyter Mouton.

ISBN 978-1-61451-050-5.

s.159-181.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Kretzschmar, William A. Jr

(2012)

Evidence from surveys and atlases in the history of the English language. I: The Oxford Handbook of the History of English.

Oxford University Press.

ISBN 978-0-19-992276-5.

s.111-122.

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0012

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

The gender of loanwords in Southwest Midland texts of the thirteenth century. I: Explorations in the English language: Middle Ages and beyond.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

ISBN 978-3-631-63384-7.

s.123-135.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2012)

Two Staffordshires: real and linguistic space in the study of Late Middle English dialects.

Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English.

ISSN 1797-4453.

Hefte 20.

Stenroos, Merja

(2010)

The pronoun of address in Piers Plowman: authorial and scribal usage.

Journal of Historical Pragmatics.

ISSN 1566-5852.

Volum 11.

Hefte 1.

s.1-31.

DOI: 10.1075/jhp.11.1.01ste

Stenroos, Merja

(2008)

Amarscled in "The Man in the Moon".

Notes and Queries.

ISSN 0029-3970.

Volum 55.

s.400-404.

Stenroos, Merja

(2008)

Order out of chaos? The English gender change in the Southwest Midlands as a process of semantically based reorganization.

English Language and Linguistics.

ISSN 1360-6743.

Volum 12.

s.445-473.

DOI: 10.1017/S1360674308002712

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2008)

A-MARSCLED IN 'THE MAN IN THE MOON'.

Notes and Queries.

ISSN 0029-3970.

Volum 55.

Hefte 4.

s.400-404.

DOI: 10.1093/notesj/gjn177

Stenroos, Merja

(2006)

A Middle English mess of fricative spellings: reflections on thorn, yogh and their rivals. I: To make his Englissh sweete upon his tonge. Series: Medieval English Mirror. ISSN: 1640-435X.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

Spelling conventions and rounded front vowels in the poems of William Herebert. I: N. Ritt and H. Schendl (eds), Rethinking Middle English: linguistic and literary approaches.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

s.291-308.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

The spread of they, their and them in English: the Late Middle English evidence. I: M. Krygier and L. Sikorska (eds), Naked Wordes in Englissh.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

s.66-96.

Stenroos, Merja

(2004)

Regional dialects and spelling conventions in Late MiddleEnglish: searches for (th)in the LALME data. I: M. Dossena and R. Lass (eds), Methods and Data in EnglishHistorical Dialectology.

Stenroos, Merja

(2002)

Words for MAN in the transmission of Piers Plowman. I: Javier E. Diaz Vera (ed.), A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics.

s.375-409.

Stenroos, Merja

(2002)

Free variation and other myths: interpreting historical English spelling.

?.

Volum 38.

s.237-260.

Stenroos, Merja; Smith, Jeremy; Horobin, Simon

(2002)

Towards a history of Middle English spelling. I: Middle English from Tongue to Text. Selected papers from the Third International Conference on Middle English: Language and Text, held at Dublin, Ireland, 1-4 July 1999.

s.9-20.

Bøker og kapitler

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2020)

Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 9789027207951.

Volum 11.

Hefte ..

Traxel, Oliver Martin; Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Mäkinen, Martti; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2019)

Current Explorations in Middle English: Selected Papers from the 10th International Conference on Middle English (ICOME), University of Stavanger, Norway, 2017.

Peter Lang Publishing Group.

ISBN 978-3631782057.

Hefte 56.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Mäkinen, Martti; Særheim, Inge

(2012)

Language Contact and Development around the North Sea.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 978-90-272-4839-8.

Volum 321.

Hefte 4.

Formidling

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2023)

‘As y shal onswere byfore god & man’: late and post-medieval legal statements as sociolinguistic evidence.

Sociolinguistic Variation in Historical Legal Texts from Britain;

2023-10-06 - 2023-10-07.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2023)

Nu is þeo leore for-leten: complexity, conservatism and substitution sets in historical English spelling.

SELIM 2023;

2023-09-13 - 2023-09-14.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2021)

The loss and persistence of spellings indicating rounded vowels in late and post-medieval West Midland texts.

ICEHL21;

2021-06-07 - 2021-06-11.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2021)

Traditional spelling as identity marking in the history of English.

Spelling identities: 2nd symposium on Linguistic Identities;

2021-11-29 - 2021-11-30.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2019)

What, if anything, are Middle English dialects? Some thoughts on a changing concept..

11th International Conference on Middle English;

2019-02-05 - 2019-02-08.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2019)

The presence of women in Middle English local documents.

SELIM 31;

2019-09-19 - 2019-09-21.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2019)

Historical documents as expressions of identity: the MELD corpus.

Linguistic Identities Symposium;

2019-09-12 - 2019-09-13.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2018)

Late medieval English documentary and literary language: how different are they?.

The 20th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics;

2018-08-27 - 2018-08-31.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2018)

Formulaicness, individual voice and the function of late medieval English letters .

SELIM 30;

2018-09-27 - 2018-09-29.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2017)

In our vulgar tongue: the ‘vernacularisation' and 'standardisation' of local administrative writing in late and post-medieval England .

The Emergence of Standard English in Multilingual Britain;

2017-04-20 - 2017-04-21.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2016)

Multilingualism and visual grammar in late medieval English land surveys.

HiSoN 2016 Historical Sociolinguistics and Socio-Cultural Change;

2016-03-10 - 2016-03-11.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2016)

Land documents as a source of word geography.

19th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics;

2016-08-22 - 2017-08-26.

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

Mapping Middle English documentary texts.

SELIM 26;

2014-09-18 - 2014-09-20.

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

Money, monks and murder: using English in the Middle Ages.

Åpen fagdag;

2014-09-28 - .

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

Beyond the predictable: schoolbooks and the habit of bilingual writing in late medieval England.

Historical code-switching: the next step;

2014-06-11 - 2014-06-13.

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

Contextualizing the written language of English merchants in the fifteenth century.

Merchants of innovation;

2014-04-07 - 2014-04-09.

Stenroos, Merja

(2014)

The MELD project: update on progress and thoughts on the way ahead.

The 3rd Middle English Scribal Texts Symposium;

2014-08-19 - .

Stenroos, Merja; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2013)

Middle English legal documents and the geography of written dialects.

ICOME 8 (8th international conference on Middle English);

2013-05-02 - 2013-05-04.

Stenroos, Merja; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2013)

The traces of vernacular literacy: mapping Middle English written variation.

Historical perspectives on English urban vernaculars;

2013-11-16.

Stenroos, Merja; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2013)

The language and geography of Middle English documentary texts.

Middle English Scribal Texts symposium;

2013-09-30.

Stenroos, Merja

(2013)

31 ord for ’man’.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Stenroos, Merja

(2013)

Griser med og uten saus.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

Dialect and bilingualism in late medieval English schoolbooks.

17th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL);

2012-08-20 - 2012-08-25.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

The development of OE eo/ēo and the systematicity of Middle English spelling.

SELIM 12;

2012-10-04 - 2012-10-06.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

Full som en lord.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

Å svive rundt på øya Man.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2012)

Real people in real places: towards a corpus of Middle English local documents.

Middle English local documents - language, geography and social history;

2012-09-07 - .

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Makinen, M; Særheim, Inge

(2012)

Editors' introduction. I: Language Contact and Development around the North Sea.

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

ISBN 978-90-272-4839-8.

s.ix-xvi.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Speaking to whom? Identity and intelligibility in Middle English scribal transmission.

Scribes as Agents of Language Change;

2011-04-04 - 2011-04-06.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

"For englisch was it neuere": grammar books and vernacularisation in fifteenth-century England.

Latin and vernacular grammatica in medieval Europe;

2011-08-11 - 2011-08-12.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Introduction to MEG-C 2011.

Lansering av Middle English Grammar Corpus 2011.1;

2011-04-10.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar

(2011)

Two Staffordshires: real and typological space in the study of Middle English linguistic variation.

Helsinki Corpus Festival;

2011-09-27 - 2011-10-02.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Skolegang og skolebøker i mellomalderen: hva engelske håndskrifter kan fortelle.

Åpen fagdag 2011;

2011-12-01.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Et lydbilde fra helvete.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Hefte 1.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Da jentene var gutter.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Hefte 3.

Stenroos, Merja Riitta

(2011)

Hody-mukke.

UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Hefte 4.

Stenroos, Merja

(2010)

Kunsten å lese mellomengelsk: trghug og thork.

Univers.

Volum 1.

Stenroos, Merja

(2010)

På jakt etter de vises stein: ord for den innvidde.

Univers.

Volum 4.

Stenroos, Merja

(2008)

Sal, xal, schal, shal and ssal: written forms of shall/should in Middle English and the question of their phonological significance.

The 15th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics;

2008-08-25 - 2008-08-29.

Stenroos, Merja

(2008)

The Middle English Grammar Project.

Symposium in celebration of the Middle English Grammar Corpus;

2008-04-25 - 2008-04-26.

Stenroos, Merja

(2008)

Transcription and lemmatization in the Middle English Grammar Project.

utenTitteltekst;

2008-05-28.

Stenroos, Merja

(2007)

Sampling and annotation in the Middle English Grammar Project.

?.

Volum 1.

Stenroos, Merja

(2007)

Making sense of Middle English spelling variation: the (sh) set.

Nordic Association of English Studies Conference;

2007-05-24 - 2007-05-26.

Stenroos, Merja; Mäkinen, Martti

(2007)

The Middle English Grammar Corpus and Database.

utenTitteltekst;

2007-02-27.

Stenroos, Merja; Mäkinen, Martti

(2007)

The Middle English Grammar project: working towards a corpus of Middle English localisable texts.

International Corpus Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME-28);

2007-05-23 - 2007-05-27.

Stenroos, Merja

(2006)

The pronoun of address in Piers Plowman: authorial and scribal usage in some C-text manuscripts.

The 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics;

2006-08-21 - 2006-08-26.

Stenroos, Merja

(2006)

Women and dangerous things in the thirteenth-century Southwest Midlands: reconsidering the semantic side of the English gender change.

utenTitteltekst;

2006-02-22.

Stenroos, Merja

(2006)

A History of Middle and Early Modern English.

NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift.

ISSN 0800-3076.

Volum 24.

Hefte 1.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

Reconsidering a Scandinavian loan: the spread of they, their, them in English.

Språkforum, Det humanistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Stavanger;

2005-01-28.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

The premature reformation: learning, literacy and radicalism in the English Wycliffite movement.

Forum for Historie og Samfunn, Det humanistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Stavanger;

2005-04-06.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

"Shalt thou so, knave?" The English pronoun of address as a problem area in late- and post-medieval written English.

Symposium on Literacy Studies, University of Stavanger;

2005-04-22 - 2005-04-24.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

Unmarked or unsexed? The loss of grammatical gender reconsidered.

The 5th International Conference on Middle English;

2005-08-24 - 2005-08-27.

Stenroos, Merja

(2005)

A Middle English mess of fricative spellings: reflections on thorn, yogh and their rivals.

The 4th Medieval English Studies Symposium, 27-28 November 2005;

2005-11-27 - 2005-11-28.

Stenroos, Merja

(2004)

Grammatical gender in Early Middle English texts of the Southwest Midlands.

13th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics;

2004-08-24 - 2004-08-28.

Stenroos, Merja

(2004)

The spread of they in Middle English: functional, diatopic and diastratic perspectives.

Third Middle English Studies Symposium;

2004-11-27 - 2004-11-28.

Stenroos, Merja

(2003)

Regional dialects and spelling conventions in Late Middle English: searches for (th) in the LALME data.

First International Conference on Historical English Dialectology;

2003-09-04 - 2003-09-07.

Stenroos, Merja

(2002)

The Middle English Grammar Project.

International Conference of English Historical Linguistics 12;

2002-08-20.

Kunstnerisk produksjon

Stenroos, Merja Riitta; Mäkinen, Martti; Horobin, Simon; Smith, Jeremy

(2011)

Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) 2011.1.

Stenroos, Merja; Mäkinen, Martti; Smith, Jeremy; Horobin, Simon

(2007)

The Middle English Grammar Corpus.