Publications

Publication details [#20002]

Mäkinen, Martti. 2002. On interaction in herbals from Middle English to Early Modern English. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 3 (2) : 229–251.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
ISBN
1566-5852
Journal DOI
10.1075/jhp

Annotation

The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. Factors which explain the differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.