Re/reading the past
Critical and functional perspectives on time and value
Editors
Re/reading the Past is concerned with the discourses of history, from the complementary perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The papers in the book stress the discursive construction of the past, focussing on the different social narratives which compete for official acknowledgement. Issues of collective and cultural memory are addressed, reflecting the "linguistic turn" in the Social Sciences. The book covers a range of discourses, interpreting texts from popular culture to academic discourse including the construction and evaluation of past events in a variety of places around the world. It is especially timely in its focus on the construction of time and value in a post-colonial world where history discourses are central to on-going processes of reconciliation, debates on war crimes, and the issues of amnesty and restitution. As such the book fills a significant gap in interdisciplinary debates as well as in register and genre analysis, and will be of general interest to historians, political scientists and discourse analysts as well as students and teachers of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes).
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 8] 2003. vi, 277 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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IntroductionJ.R. Martin and Ruth Wodak | pp. 1–16
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I. Constructing time and value: Semiotic resources
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Making history: Grammar for interpretationJ.R. Martin | pp. 19–57
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II. Recent past: Telling stories
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News as history: Your daily gossipPeter R.R. White | pp. 61–89
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Challenging media censoring: Writing between the lines in the face of stringent restrictionsChristine Anthonissen | pp. 91–112
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III. Distant past: Making history
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The discursive construction of individual memories: How Austrian “Wehrmacht” soldiers remember WWIIGertraud Benke and Ruth Wodak | pp. 115–138
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The languages of the past: On the re-construction of a collective history through individual storiesFlorian Menz | pp. 139–175
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Orthopraxy, writing and identity: Shaping lives through borrowed genres in CongoJan Blommaert | pp. 177–194
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History as discourse; discourse as history: “The rise of modern China” — A history exhibition in post-colonial Hong KongJohn Flowerdew | pp. 195–216
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IV. Yesteryear: Instilling memories
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Reconstruals of the past — settlement or invasion? The role of JUDGEMENT analysisCaroline Coffin | pp. 219–246
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Pearl Harbor in Japanese high school history textbooks: The grammar and semantics of responsibilityChristopher Barnard | pp. 247–271
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Index | pp. 273–275
“This volume provides multiple models of approaching historical discourse from a critical perspective, enabling the comparison and evaluation of different approaches to data and frameworks for analysis, as well as encouraging dialogue between CDA and SFL. It is a valuable resource for understanding how texts and contexts interact in the construction of evaluation and interpretation in history.”
Mary J. Schleppegrell, University of California, Davis, USA, in Discourse Studies Vol. 7:3 (2005)
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2003057867