Letter Writing as a Social Practice
Editors
| Lancaster University
| Manchester Metropolitan University
This book explores the social significance of letter writing. Letter writing is one of the most pervasive literate activities in human societies, crossing formal and informal contexts. Letters are a common text type, appearing in a wide variety of forms in most domains of life. More broadly, the importance of letter writing can be seen in that the phenomenon has been widespread historically, being one of earliest forms of writing, and a wide range of contemporary genres have their roots in letters. The writing of a letter is embedded in a particular social situation, and like all other types of literacy objects and events, the activity gains its meaning and significance from being situated in cultural beliefs, values, and practices. This book brings together anthropologists, historians, educators and other social scientists, providing a range of case studies that explore aspects of the socially situated nature of letter writing.
[Studies in Written Language and Literacy, 9] 2000. vi, 262 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
|
1
|
|
|
15
|
|
|
31
|
|
|
43
|
|
|
63
|
|
|
83
|
|
|
109
|
|
|
131
|
|
|
151
|
|
|
|
|
|
199
|
|
|
209
|
|
|
233
|
|
|
Author biographies
|
253
|
|
Index of Names
|
257
|
|
Index of Subjects
|
259
|
“Barton and Hall's book is a hallmark example of the New Literacies Studies. A variety of careful studies of letter writing as realized in different local and situated practices illuminates a bevy of important theoretical issues dealing with the history of literacy, cultural change, the development of different genres in science and everyday life, the negotiation and renegotiation of identities, the nature of schools and schooling, new technologies, and the socioculturally variable workings of class, race, ethnicity, and gender.”
James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Four years ago, when I was developing the reading list for a new course in life writing, I was disappointed and surprised to find that very little research had been published on a practice so ubiquitous and so apparently everyday as writing letters. This book, then, which looks at letter writing and reading across cultures, is a much needed scholarly contribution to the study of written language and social communication. Humble as it may seem, early evidence of the letter form can be identified in all kinds of historical written transactions, including — amazingly — the Magna Carta and the US dollar. This book testifies to the flexibility and significance of letter writing as a social practice and helpfully brings together examinations of older forms of letter writing with contemporary practice including the use of e-mail.”
Dorothy Sheridan, Archivist (University of Sussex)
“The articles selected for inclusion in this book cover a diverse range of topics, representing various cultures and historical eras. However, no matter what particular subject matter is addressed by these authors, a perspective of the letter as a social practice ties all the articles together [...] Taken as a whole, these articles do indeed present a convincing argument that there are social effects of letter writing that are rarely explored in academic literature [...] Given the lack of such research in the past, this book is more than a beginning; it provides a look at the most current and relevant considerations of letters across disciplines, and is a useful addition to the libraries of those who study the social implications of personal communication.”
Jennifer L. Adams, Purdue University in The Review of Communication 2:1, 2002
Cited by
Cited by 40 other publications
No author info given
2017.
In Das Charisma der Weltrevolution,
► pp. 220 ff. 
No author info given
2017.
In L'Époque de la Renaissance (1400–1600) [Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, XXX],
Abraham, Juneman & Any Rufaedah
2014. “Theologization” of Psychology and “Psychologization” of Religion: How Do Psychology and Religion Supposedly Contribute to Prevent and Overcome Social Conflicts?.
Procedia Environmental Sciences 20 ► pp. 516 ff.
Ahearn, Laura M.
2001. Language and Agency.
Annual Review of Anthropology 30:1 ► pp. 109 ff.
Almasy, Karin
2018. The Linguistic and Visual Portrayal of Identifications in Slovenian and German Picture Postcards (1890–1920).
Austrian History Yearbook 49 ► pp. 41 ff.
Annuk, Eve
2007. Letters as a New Approach to History: A Case Study of an Estonian Poet Ilmi Kolla (1933–1954).
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 15:1 ► pp. 6 ff.
Aronis, Carolin
2017. Communicative Resurrection: Letters to the Dead in the Israeli Newspaper.
Journal of Communication 67:6 ► pp. 827 ff.
Bolles, Lynn
2020. Reciprocal arrangements: The life story of “Rosalind”—Woman worker, mother, and Jamaican.
Feminist Anthropology 1:2 ► pp. 260 ff.
Borges, Marcelo J. & Sonia Cancian
2016. Reconsidering the migrant letter: from the experience of migrants to the language of migrants.
The History of the Family 21:3 ► pp. 281 ff.
Coffman, Elesha
2012. The Measure of a Magazine: Assessing the Influence of the Christian Century.
Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 22:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2016.
In Handbook of Pragmatics,
Crangle, Sara
2005. SEpistolarity, audience, selfhood: the letters of dorothy osborne to william temple.
Women's Writing 12:3 ► pp. 433 ff.
D’Amore, Manuela
2017.
In The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies,
► pp. 31 ff.
Grant, Linda
2019.
In Latin Erotic Elegy and the Shaping of Sixteenth-Century English Love Poetry,
Halldórsdóttir, Erla Hulda
2007. Fragments of Lives—The Use of Private Letters in Historical Research.
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 15:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Halldórsdóttir, Erla Hulda
2010. The Narrative of Silence.
Life Writing 7:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Halldórsdóttir, Erla Hulda
2015. ‘Do Not Let Anyone See This Ugly Scrawling’: Literacy Practices and the Women's Household at Hallfreðarstaðir 1817–1829.
Life Writing 12:3 ► pp. 289 ff.
Hamilton, Mary
2006. Just do it: Literacies, everyday learning and the irrelevance of pedagogy.
Studies in the Education of Adults 38:2 ► pp. 125 ff.
Harding, Jennifer R
2021. Epistolary cognition: The family letters of Rosalie Calvert.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 30:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Herring, Susan C. & Asta Zelenkauskaite
2009. Symbolic Capital in a Virtual Heterosexual Market.
Written Communication 26:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Higgitt, Rebekah & Charles W. J. Withers
2008. Science and Sociability: Women as Audience at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1901.
Isis 99:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Hollow, Matthew
2020. Historicizing entrepreneurial networks.
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 14:1 ► pp. 66 ff.
Hou, Dongchen
2020. Writing Sound: Stenography, Writing Technology, and National Modernity in China, 1890s.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 30:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Howell, Jessica M.
2016. Nurse going native: Language and identity in letters from Africa and the British West Indies.
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 51:1 ► pp. 165 ff.
Laitinen, Mikko & Anita Auer
2014.
In Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English [Studies in Language Companion Series, 159],
► pp. 187 ff.
LAMPRECHT, LOGAN M.
2015. A Phenomenological Inquiry of Clients' Experiences of Receiving a Humanistically Oriented Therapeutic Letter From Their Counselor Between Counseling Sessions.
The Journal of Humanistic Counseling 54:3 ► pp. 187 ff.
Laughey, William F., Megan E. L. Brown, Ariel Liu, Angelique N. Dueñas & Gabrielle M. Finn
2021. Love and breakup letter methodology: A new research technique for medical education.
Medical Education
Leskelä‐Kärki, Maarit
2007. Constructing Sisterly Relations in Epistolary Practices: The Writing Krohn Sisters (1890–1950).
NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 15:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Madianou, Mirca & Daniel Miller
2011. Crafting Love: Letters and Cassette Tapes in Transnational Filipino Family Communication.
South East Asia Research 19:2 ► pp. 249 ff.
Meier, Ninna & Charlotte Wegener
2017. Writing With Resonance.
Journal of Management Inquiry 26:2 ► pp. 193 ff.
Nevala, Minna & Minna Palander-Collin
2005. Letters and Letter Writing: Introduction.
European Journal of English Studies 9:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Nordlund Edvinsson, Therese
2021. The game/s that men play: Male bonding in the Swedish business elite 1890–1960.
Business History ► pp. 1 ff.
Norhafizah, Tuan, Tuan Zakaria, Mohd Juzaiddin Ab Aziz, Tg Nor Rizan & Tg Mohd Maasum
2010.
In 2010 International Symposium on Information Technology,
► pp. 1199 ff.
O’ Hagan, Lauren
2018. “Clean Nails are the Mark of a Well Brought-Up Girl”: Exploring Gender in a Post-Edwardian Girls’ School Exercise Book.
Women's Studies 47:8 ► pp. 765 ff.
Pyle, Nathan R.
2009. Therapeutic Letters as Relationally Responsive Practice.
Journal of Family Nursing 15:1 ► pp. 65 ff.
Stanley, Liz, Andrea Salter & Helen Dampier
2012. The Epistolary Pact, Letterness.
a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 27:2 ► pp. 262 ff.
Stanley, Liz, Andrea Salter & Helen Dampier
2013. The Work of Making and the Work it Does: Cultural Sociology and ‘Bringing- Into-Being’ the Cultural Assemblage of the Olive Schreiner Letters.
Cultural Sociology 7:3 ► pp. 287 ff.
Starfield, Jane
2015. Remembrance of things past and recent: Modiri Molema's letters home to Mafeking.
Scrutiny2 20:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Tamboukou, Maria
2016. The autobiographical you: letters in the gendered politics of the labour movement.
Journal of Gender Studies 25:3 ► pp. 269 ff.
Vassiliadou, Dimitra
2020.
In The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography,
► pp. 207 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 may 2021. 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
BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General