]
MTh, MA, Postgraduate researcher
Old English, Middle English, historical linguistics, religious language
I am currently coming towards the end of writing a doctoral dissertation on the early vocabulary of baptism and its development, the aim of which is to clarify how Old English lexical items relating to baptism were formed and how they later developed in the Old and Middle English periods. The thesis will cover the theological core vocabulary of baptism and the vocabulary of spiritual kinship as well as words formed from them. I will be looking at the various linguistic components and etymologies and trying to trace both lexical and semantic developments within the linguistic, religious and historical contexts in which the words were created, used and recorded.