Communities of Practice in the History of English
Editors
Languages change and they keep changing as a result of communicative interactions and practices in the context of communities of language users. The articles in this volume showcase a range of such communities and their practices as loci of language change in the history of English. The notion of communities of practice takes its starting point in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and refers to groups of people defined both through their membership in a community and through their shared practices. Three types of communities are particularly highlighted: networks of letter writers; groups of scribes and printers; and other groups of professionals, in particular administrators and scientists. In these diverse contexts in England, Scotland, the United States and South Africa, language change is not seen as an abstract process but as a response to the communicative needs and practices of groups of people engaged in interaction.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 235] 2013. vii, 291 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Preface | p. vii
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Communities of practice as a locus of language changeAndreas H. Jucker and Joanna Kopaczyk | pp. 1–16
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I. Letter writers
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The role of communities of practice in the emergence of Scottish Standard EnglishJanet Cruickshank | pp. 19–46
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Mixing genres and reinforcing community ties in nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence: Formality, familiarity and religious discourseMarina Dossena | pp. 47–60
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Communities of practice, idiolects, and community grammar: Variation in the past tensebe paradigms in the Civil War letters from Northeastern South CarolinaRadosław Dylewski | pp. 61–82
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Community or communities of practice? 1820 petitioners in the Cape ColonyMatylda Włodarczyk | pp. 83–102
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II. Scribes and printers
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Crafting text languages: Spelling systems in manuscripts of theMan of Law’s Taleas a means of construing scribal community of practiceJustyna Rogos-Hebda | pp. 105–122
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Typographical and graphomorphemic features of five editions of the Kalender of Shepherdesas elements of the early printers’ community of practiceHanna Rutkowska | pp. 123–150
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Printing houses as communities of practice: Orthography in early modern medical booksJukka Tyrkkö | pp. 151–176
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Elizabeth Montagu’s Shakespeare essay (1769): The final draft and the first edition as evidence of two communities of practiceAnni Sairio | pp. 177–198
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III. Professionals
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Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: Bilingual communities of practice in Anglo-Saxon EnglandOlga Timofeeva | pp. 201–224
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How a community of practice creates a text community: Middle Scots legal and administrative discourseJoanna Kopaczyk | pp. 225–250
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“These two, Physitians and Chirurgeons, are to be intimate friends together”: Early Modern English community of medical practitionersAnna Hebda and Malgorzata Fabiszak | pp. 251–268
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The formation of the Royal Society as a community of practice and discourseMaurizio Gotti | pp. 269–286
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Index of names | pp. 287–288
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Index of subjects | pp. 289–291
“With this collection, Joanna Kopaczyk and Andreas H. Jucker provide a clear pragmaphilological perspective on changes in English brought about by the way in which evolving groups of speakers use and develop repertoires in mutual engagement with joint enterprises. Their choice of ‘community of practice’ as the central notion underlying this perspective is highly original and most enlightening. A fascinating contribution to the history of English.”
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp
“This ground-breaking volume brings together twelve studies applying the concept of community of practice to linguistic interaction in historical communities, from Anglo-Saxon England to nineteenth-century South Africa. These studies provide a powerful demonstration of the uniformitarian principle at work, as historical documents are investigated within the micro-social contexts of their production, putting the ‘socio’ at the forefront of socio-historical linguistics. This volume should be of great interest to scholars of historical linguistics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics alike.”
Joan Beal, University of Sheffield
“The papers demonstrate how fruitful data-oriented approaches combined with innovative corpus linguistic tools can be, which makes the volume not only valuable for those interested in the language history of English but for historical sociolinguistics in general.”
Markus Schiegg, University of Bristol, in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics Vol. 1:1 (2015), pag. 135-138
Cited by (32)
Cited by 32 other publications
CALLE-MARTÍN, JAVIER & MARTA PACHECO-FRANCO
Alonso-Almeida, Francisco & Francisco José Álvarez-Gil
2021. Impoliteness in women’s specialised writing in seventeenth-century English. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 22:1 ► pp. 121 ff.
Bergs, Alexander
Leitner, Magdalena & Andreas H. Jucker
Oudesluijs, Tino
Leuckert, Sven
Smith, Jeremy J.
2020. Chapter 7. Godly vocabulary in Early Modern English religious debate. In Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 97], ► pp. 96 ff.
Smith, Jeremy J.
2021. Lexical choices in Early Modern English devotional prose. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 22:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
Smith, Jeremy J.
Beal, Joan C.
2019. Chapter 2. Enregisterment and historical sociolinguistics. In Processes of Change [Studies in Language Variation, 21], ► pp. 7 ff.
Moore, Colette
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. & Tamara García-Vidal
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. & Tamara García-Vidal
Chovanec, Jan
2017. Chapter 10. From adverts to letters to the editor. In Diachronic Developments in English News Discourse [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 6], ► pp. 175 ff.
Blas Arroyo, José Luis
2016. The rise and fall of a change from below in Early Modern Spanish. Journal of Historical Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2022. Historical sociolinguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 756 ff.
Timofeeva, Olga
TIMOFEEVA, OLGA
Verschueren, Jef
Verschueren, Jef
Auer, Anita, Catharina Peersman, Simon Pickl, Gijsbert Rutten & Rik Vosters
Fisher, Rebecca, Victoria Symons, Simon Thomson & Christine Wallis
NEVALAINEN, TERTTU
Tight, Malcolm
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 september 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
CFF: Historical & comparative linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN000000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / General