Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past
Editors
This volume presents a variety of pragmatic and discourse analytical approaches to a wide range of linguistic data and historical texts, including data from English, French, Irish, Latin, and Spanish. This diversity of research questions and methods is a feature of the field of historical pragmatics, which by its very nature has to take into account the multiplicity of historical contexts and the infinite variety of human interaction. This is highlighted in the book’s introduction by means of the metaphor of "opening windows". Each chapter is a window affording a different view of the linguistic and textual landscape. Some of these windows were opened by historical linguists who have acquired discourse perspectives, some by pragmaticians with historical interests, and others by literary scholars drawing from linguistic pragmatics. Contributors include L. J. Brinton, A. H. Jucker, F. Salager-Meyer, I. Taavitsainen, B. Wehr, L. Wright, and sixteen others.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 134] 2005. x, 418 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments | p. ix
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A frame for windows: On studying texts and discourses of the pastMatti Peikola and Janne Skaffari | pp. 1–4
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Discourse in the public sphere | p. 5
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News discourse: Mass media communication from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuryAndreas H. Jucker | pp. 7–21
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Advertising discourse in eighteenth-century English newspapersMaurizio Gotti | pp. 23–38
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Presidential inaugural addresses: A study in a genre developmentNatalia Kovalyova | pp. 39–52
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Freedom of speech at stake: Fallacies in some political discourses in the Early RepublicJuhani Rudanko | pp. 53–63
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Text-initiating strategies in eighteenth-century newspaper headlinesPatrick Studer | pp. 65–79
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Science and academia | p. 81
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Patterns of agentivity and narrativity in early science discourseHeidrun Dorgeloh | pp. 83–94
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The economics academic lecture in the nineteenth century: Marshall's Lectures to WomenGabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti | pp. 95–107
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Contesting authorities: John Wilkins' use of and attitude towards the Bible, the classics and contemporary science in The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638)Marko Oja | pp. 109–122
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Personal pronouns in argumentation: An early tobacco controversyMaura Ratia | pp. 123–141
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Criticism under scrutiny: A diachronic and cross-cultural outlook on academic conflict (1810–1995)Françoise Salager-Meyer | pp. 143–160
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The underlying pattern of the Renaissance botanical genrepinaxPhilippe Selosse | pp. 161–178
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Genres and the appropriation of science: Loci communes in English in the late medieval and early modern periodIrma Taavitsainen | pp. 179–196
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Letters and litterature | p. 197
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Chaucer's narrators and audiences: Self-deprecating discourse in Book of the Duchess and House of FameMichael Foster | pp. 199–213
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Discourse on a par with syntax, or the effects of the linguistic organisation of letters on the diachronic characterisation of the text typeJavier Pérez-Guerra | pp. 215–235
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Verba sic spernit mea: The usage of rupture of coherence in Seneca's tragediesAugustin Speyer | pp. 237–256
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Discourse and pragmatics | p. 257
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‘Ther been thinges thre, the whiche thynges troublen al this erthe’: The discourse-pragmatics of ‘demonstrative which’Alexander Bergs | pp. 259–277
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Processes underlying the development of pragmatic markers: The case of (I) sayLaurel J. Brinton | pp. 279–299
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From certainty to doubt: The evolution of the discourse marker voire in FrenchAmalia Rodríguez Somolinos | pp. 301–317
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Politeness as a distancing device in the passive and in indefinite pronounsJun-ichi Toyota | pp. 319–339
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Language contact and discourse | p. 341
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Discourse features of code-switching in legal reports in late medieval EnglandMary Catherine Davidson | pp. 343–351
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Focusing strategies in Old French and Old IrishBarbara Wehr | pp. 353–379
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Medieval mixed-language business discourse and the rise of Standard EnglishLaura Wright | pp. 381–399
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Author Index | pp. 401–407
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Subject Index | pp. 409–416
“This collection simultaneously covers a diverse range of topics and issues related to contemporary discourse studies, including media, political rhetoric, argumentative, and expository literary discourse, pragmatics, language switching, business writing, etc. The volume, as such, provides a valuable groundwork for scholars with interests not only in diachronic perspectives on discourse, but for those who are interested in the social changes from a multidisciplinary point of view, genre theory, social sciences, etc. This volume provides subtle and revealing explorations of various issues related to historical discourses and at the same time it poses questions and provides answers that will impact on future thinking about pragmatics, and discourse and society in general and about historical discourse linguistics.”
Aleksandar Carapic, in Discourse Studies 8 (4)
“[...] the extension and consistency of the articles in this volume is rich and presents a variety of papers on very different issues, at the same time autonomous and worth a further insight on the one side, interdependent and contributing to reinforce the dynamic framework of historical pragmatics on the other.”
Giampaolo Poletto, University of Pécs, Hungary, on Linguist List 16.1167 (2006)
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2021. Multilingualism and Language Contact in the Cely Letters. Anglia 139:2 ► pp. 327 ff. 
Mazzon, Gabriella
2019. Variation in the expression of stance across varieties of English. World Englishes 38:4 ► pp. 593 ff.
Percy, Carol
2012. Early Advertising and Newspapers as Sources of Sociolinguistic Investigation. In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 191 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General