Chapter published in:
The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena: Historical approaches to paratext and metadiscourse in EnglishEdited by Matti Peikola and Birte Bös
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 317] 2020
► pp. 63–90
Chapter 3The footnote in Late Modern English historiographical writing
Claudia Claridge | University of Augsburg
Sebastian Wagner | University of Augsburg
An aspect distinguishing historical from other narration is the historiographers’ engagement with sources and other scholars, which shows as intertextuality in the text. A prominent intertextual device is the (foot)note, which originates around 1700 (Grafton 1997: 191) and whose institutionalised presence separates older, literary historiography from the more modern scholarly type and with regard to frequency of use also history from other humanities research (Koskela and Männikkö 2009: 155). A footnote may simply be used to provide a reference, the origin of information and thus evidence. Additionally this evidence may be further commented on. If there is more or other content than a reference, the text-note coherence relationship can be described by adapting the Hallidayan (clause) expansion types of elaboration, extension and enhancement. The exploratory study further shows that positioning of self and others within the historiographical discourse community can be done via stance devices in the footnote text.
Keywords: historiography, footnote, paratext, evidentiality, positioning, reader alignment, evaluation
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Footnotes – paratext – metadiscourse
- 3. Historiography and footnotes
- 4.Data and methodology
- 5.Text-note linking: Functions
- 6.Authorial positioning in footnotes
- 6.1Evaluation in footnotes
- 6.2Authors and readers in interaction
- 7.Discussion and conclusion
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Notes -
Primary sources -
Secondary sources
Published online: 18 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.317.03cla
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.317.03cla
References
Primary sources
Burnet, Gilbert
Dugdale, William
Gibbon, Edward
Macaulay, Thomas
Secondary sources
Barker, Nicholas
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
Bede
Birke, Dorothee, and Birte Christ
Brie, Friedrich W. D.
Genette, Gérard
Genette, Gérard, and Marie Maclean
Gossman, Lionel
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
Hesketh, Ian
Hyland, Ken
Koskela, Merja, and Tiina Männikkö
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White
More, Thomas
O’Brien, Karen
OED: Oxford English Dictionary
Slights, William W. E.
Soffer, Reba N.