Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern EnglishPäivi Pahta, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi This volume presents a ground-breaking overview of the interconnections between socio-cultural reality and language practices, by looking at the different ways in which social roles are performed, maintained, adopted and assigned through linguistic means. The introductory chapter discusses and evaluates different theoretical approaches to the question, and the eight articles by leading scholars in the field offer a multiplicity of methodological and theoretical approaches to the description and interpretation of social roles as expressed in a variety of texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the specific period covered is Late Modern English, the theoretical insights offered will be of interest to any linguist interested in sociolinguistics, pragmatics and the history of English, as well as scholars in the social sciences and social history interested in the concept and realisation of roles. "This is a trailblazing volume. Too often do studies in historical linguistics adopt social (or other) theories of yesterday. But here we have cutting-edge research on social roles, identities and practices applied innovatively to historical data, leading to new insights-not just about Late Modern English but also about the dynamics of language, social phenomena and change-and lighting the way for future research." Jonathan Culpeper, Senior Lecturer, English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University "This collection of uniformly strong studies brings a contemporary, sophisticated understanding of social roles, positions and identities to historical written texts, and so raises new and exciting questions on the ways in which writing, early on, became a vehicle for articulating more than ideas and stories-how writing became an instrument for endorsing, questioning and challenging the social order." Jan Blommaert, Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization, Director, Babylon Center, Tilburg University |
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Contents
Language practices in the construction of social roles in Late Modern English | 1 |
Mr Spectator identity and social roles in an early eighteenthcentury community of practice and the periodical discourse community | 29 |
How eighteenthcentury book reviewers became language guardians | 55 |
if You think me obstinate I cant help it | 87 |
Reporting and social role construction in eighteenthcentury personal correspondence | 111 |
Preacher scholar brother friend | 135 |
The social space of an eighteenthcentury governess | 163 |
Building trust through selfappraisal in nineteenthcentury business correspondence | 191 |
Goodnatured fellows and poor mothers | 211 |
Name index | 229 |
235 | |
242 | |
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Addison adjectives Agnes Porter analysis Anon Aristotle's Treatise Arja Nurmi authors Bluestocking Burney's letters Cambridge University Press century Charles Burney children's literature code-switching community of practice construction context contractions correspondence Critical Review deixis direct reporting discourse community discussion domains Dossena eighteenth eighteenth-century Elizabeth Montagu encoder epistemic epistolary spelling example expression Fanny Burney Fitzmaurice forms frequent friends functions gender genres governess grammar Helsinki Hester Thrale Hester Thrale Piozzi History identity included instance interaction journals keywords Kirkpatrick Lady Mary language practices Late Modern English lexical literary London male characters Minna Nevala modal auxiliaries Monthly Review multilingual negative nineteenth-century Oldireva Palander-Collin periodical polite positive Pragmatics readers recipient relationships Ribeiro Richard Richard Twining Sarah Sarah Scott Scott Smollett social roles social space Sociolinguistics Spectator style switching texts Thomas Twining Tieken-Boon van Ostade tion Treatise on Poetry Twining's University of Helsinki variation verb words writing