Merja Riitta Stenroos

Professor

Merja Riitta Stenroos

Contact

Telephone: 5183 1365

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

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs; Kenneth Solberg-Harestad (2025) Studies of the development of London English based on late and post-medieval documentary evidence. Universitetet i Stavanger. ISBN 9788284393872.

Merja Stenroos (2024) Strange spellings and prodigal scribes : xall and xe in late medieval English. I: Klaus Johan Myrvoll; Oliver Martin Traxel, Spelling Identities : Individual Orthographic Usages in English, Nordic and Constructed Languages. Reichert Verlag. ISBN 9783752006896. s.33-51.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2024) Nu is þeo Leore For-Leten: Conventionality, Complexity and Substitution Sets in Historical English Spelling. I: SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature. ISSN 1132-631X. Volum 29. s.109-125. DOI: 10.17811/selim.29.2024.109-125

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2021) What if anything are Middle English dialects : Some thoughts on a changing concept. I: Letizia Vezzosi, Current Issues in Medieval England. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISBN 9783631862957. s.217-244.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Delia Schipor (2020) Multilingual practices in Middle English documents. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, 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

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2020) The vernacularisation and standardisation of local administrative writing in late and post-medieval England. I: Wright Laura, The multilingual origins of standard English. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9783110687514. s.39-85. DOI: 10.1515/9783110687545-003

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2020) The geography of Middle English documentary texts. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, 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

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2020) Land documents as a source of word geography. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, 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

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2020) Local documents as source material for the study of late medieval English. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, 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

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2020) Regional variation and supralocalization in late medieval English: comparing administrative and literary texts. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027207951. s.96-128. DOI: 10.1075/ahs.11.05ste

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Geir Bergstrøm; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2020) The categorization of Middle English documents : interactions of function form and language. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, 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

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2019) The development of Old English eo/eo and the systematicity of Middle English spelling. I: Bettelou Los; Benjamin Molineaux; Rhona Alcorn; Joanna Kopaczyk, Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474430531. s.133-155.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2019) Langage o northrin lede: northern Middle English as a written medium. I: Camille Marshall; Denis Renevey; Tino Oudesluijs; Anita Auer, Revisiting the medieval North of England. University of Wales Press. ISBN 9781786833945. s.44-63.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2018) From scribal repertoire to text community: the challenge of variable writing systems. I: Jennifer Cromwell; Eitan Grossman, Scribal repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic period. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198768104. s.20-40. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768104.003.0002

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2017) Like the coins when currencies are combined: contextualizing the written language of fifteenth-century English merchants. I: Esther-Miriam Wagner; Bettina Beinhoff; Ben Outhwaite, Merchants of Innovation. The Languages of Traders. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9781501503542. s.19-39. DOI: 10.1515/9781501503542-002

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2017) Perspectives on geographical variation. I: Laurel Brinton, English historical linguistics: approaches and perspectives. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107113640. s.303-331. DOI: 10.1017/9781316286562.012

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Jeremy J. Smith (2016) Changing functions: English spelling before 1600. I: Vivian Cook; Des Ryan, The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System. Routledge. ISBN 9780415715973. s.125-142.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2016) Regional language and culture: the geography of Middle English linguistic variation. I: Tim Machan, Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500-1500. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107058590. s.100-125. DOI: 10.1017/cbo9781107415836.006

Merja Stenroos (2014) Fugitive voices: personal involvement in Middle English letters of defence. I: Kari E. Haugland; Kevin McCafferty; Kristian A. Rusten, '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.

Merja Stenroos (2013) Identity and intelligibility in Late Middle English scribal transmission: local dialect as an active choice in fifteenth-century texts. I: Esther-Miriam Wagner; Ben Outhwaite; Bettina Beinhoff, Scribes as agents of language change. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9781614510505. s.159-181.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2012) The gender of loanwords in Southwest Midland texts of the thirteenth century. I: Joanna Esquibel; Anna Wojtys, Explorations in the English language: Middle Ages and beyond. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISBN 9783631633847. s.123-135.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2012) Two Staffordshires: real and linguistic space in the study of Late Middle English dialects. I: Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English. Online ISSN 1797-4453.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; William A. Jr Kretzschmar (2012) Evidence from surveys and atlases in the history of the English language. I: Terttu Nevalainen; Elizabeth Closs Traugott, The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199922765. s.111-122. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0012

Merja Stenroos (2010) The pronoun of address in Piers Plowman: authorial and scribal usage. I: Journal of Historical Pragmatics. ISSN 1566-5852. Volum 11. s.1-31. DOI: 10.1075/jhp.11.1.01ste

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2008) A-MARSCLED IN 'THE MAN IN THE MOON'. I: Notes and Queries. ISSN 0029-3970. Volum 55. s.400-404. DOI: 10.1093/notesj/gjn177

Merja Stenroos (2008) Order out of chaos? The English gender change in the Southwest Midlands as a process of semantically based reorganization. I: English Language and Linguistics. ISSN 1360-6743. Volum 12. s.445-473. DOI: 10.1017/S1360674308002712

Merja Stenroos (2008) Amarscled in "The Man in the Moon". I: Notes and Queries. ISSN 0029-3970. Volum 55. s.400-404.

Merja Stenroos (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. s.27-27.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (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. Peter Lang.

Merja Stenroos (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. Rodopi. s.375-409.

Merja Stenroos; Jeremy Smith; Simon Horobin (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. Peter Lang. s.9-20.

Merja Stenroos (2002) Free variation and other myths: interpreting historical English spelling. I: ?. Volum 38. s.237-260.

Bøker og kapitler

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Lili Liu (2024) A Comparison of Conceptual Metaphors of Love and Marriage in Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Giancarlo Gjertsen Napoli (2021) A Brewed Awakening: A Visual Analysis of Craft Beer Labels and Their Use of Multimodality in the Transmission of Culture, Identity, and Taste.. Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2020) Records of real people : Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027207951.

Oliver Martin Traxel; Merja Riitta Stenroos; Martti Mäkinen; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (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 9783631782057.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Martti Mäkinen; Inge Særheim (2012) Language Contact and Development around the North Sea. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027248398.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; M Makinen; Inge Særheim (2012) Editors' introduction. I: Merja Riitta Stenroos; Martti Mäkinen; Inge Særheim, Language Contact and Development around the North Sea. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027248398. s.ix-xvi.

Formidling

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2023) Nu is þeo leore for-leten: complexity, conservatism and substitution sets in historical English spelling. SELIM 2023; 2023-09-13 - 2023-09-14.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2021) Traditional spelling as identity marking in the history of English. Spelling identities: 2nd symposium on Linguistic Identities; 2021-11-29 - 2021-11-30.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2019) Historical documents as expressions of identity: the MELD corpus. Linguistic Identities Symposium; 2019-09-12 - 2019-09-13.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2019) The presence of women in Middle English local documents. SELIM 31; 2019-09-19 - 2019-09-21.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2018) Formulaicness, individual voice and the function of late medieval English letters. SELIM 30; 2018-09-27 - 2018-09-29.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2016) Land documents as a source of word geography. 19th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics; 2016-08-22 - 2017-08-26.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2014) The MELD project: update on progress and thoughts on the way ahead. The 3rd Middle English Scribal Texts Symposium; 2014-08-19.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2014) Money, monks and murder: using English in the Middle Ages. Åpen fagdag; 2014-09-28.

Merja Stenroos (2014) Contextualizing the written language of English merchants in the fifteenth century. Merchants of innovation; 2014-04-07 - 2014-04-09.

Merja Stenroos (2014) Mapping Middle English documentary texts. SELIM 26; 2014-09-18 - 2014-09-20.

Merja Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (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.

Merja Stenroos (2013) Griser med og uten saus. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2013) The language and geography of Middle English documentary texts. Middle English Scribal Texts symposium; 2013-09-30.

Merja Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2013) The traces of vernacular literacy: mapping Middle English written variation. Historical perspectives on English urban vernaculars; 2013-11-16.

Merja Stenroos (2013) 31 ord for ’man’. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2012) The development of OE eo/ēo and the systematicity of Middle English spelling. SELIM 12; 2012-10-04 - 2012-10-06.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2012) Dialect and bilingualism in late medieval English schoolbooks. 17th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL); 2012-08-20 - 2012-08-25.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2012) Å svive rundt på øya Man. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2012) Full som en lord. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Da jentene var gutter. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Introduction to MEG-C 2011. Lansering av Middle English Grammar Corpus 2011.1; 2011-04-10.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Skolegang og skolebøker i mellomalderen: hva engelske håndskrifter kan fortelle. Åpen fagdag 2011; 2011-12-01.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Speaking to whom? Identity and intelligibility in Middle English scribal transmission. Scribes as Agents of Language Change; 2011-04-04 - 2011-04-06.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Hody-mukke. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Riitta Stenroos; Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs (2011) Two Staffordshires: real and typological space in the study of Middle English linguistic variation. Helsinki Corpus Festival; 2011-09-27 - 2011-10-02.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (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.

Merja Riitta Stenroos (2011) Et lydbilde fra helvete. I: UniverS : magasin for Universitetet i Stavanger.

Merja Stenroos (2010) Kunsten å lese mellomengelsk: trghug og thork. I: Univers. Volum 1.

Merja Stenroos (2010) På jakt etter de vises stein: ord for den innvidde. I: Univers. Volum 4.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2008) Transcription and lemmatization in the Middle English Grammar Project. utenTitteltekst; 2008-05-28.

Merja Stenroos (2008) The Middle English Grammar Project. Symposium in celebration of the Middle English Grammar Corpus; 2008-04-25 - 2008-04-26.

Merja Stenroos; Martti Mäkinen (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.

Merja Stenroos; Martti Mäkinen (2007) The Middle English Grammar Corpus and Database. utenTitteltekst; 2007-02-27.

Merja Stenroos (2007) Making sense of Middle English spelling variation: the (sh) set. Nordic Association of English Studies Conference; 2007-05-24 - 2007-05-26.

Merja Stenroos (2007) Sampling and annotation in the Middle English Grammar Project. I: ?. Volum 1.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2006) Women and dangerous things in the thirteenth-century Southwest Midlands: reconsidering the semantic side of the English gender change. utenTitteltekst; 2006-02-22.

Merja Stenroos (2006) A History of Middle and Early Modern English. I: NLT - Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0800-3076. Volum 24. s.7-7.

Merja Stenroos (2005) Unmarked or unsexed? The loss of grammatical gender reconsidered. The 5th International Conference on Middle English; 2005-08-24 - 2005-08-27.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2005) Reconsidering a Scandinavian loan: the spread of they, their, them in English. Språkforum, Det humanistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Stavanger; 2005-01-28.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2004) The spread of they in Middle English: functional, diatopic and diastratic perspectives. Third Middle English Studies Symposium; 2004-11-27 - 2004-11-28.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (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.

Merja Stenroos (2002) The Middle English Grammar Project. International Conference of English Historical Linguistics 12; 2002-08-20.

Source: Nasjonalt vitenarkiv