Touching the Past

Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents

Editors

Marijke J. van der Wal

| Leiden University

Gijsbert Rutten

| Leiden University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027200808 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027271778 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

The study of ego-documents figures as a prominent theme in cutting-edge research in the Humanities. Focusing on private letters, diaries and autobiography, this volume covers a wide range of different languages and historical periods, from the sixteenth century to World War I. The volume stands out by its consistent application of the most recent developments in historical-sociolinguistic methodology in research on first-person writings.

Some of the articles concentrate on social differences in relation to linguistic variation in the historical context. Others hone in on self-representation, writer-addressee interaction and identity work. The key issue of the relationship between speech and writing is addressed when investigating the hybridity of ego-documents, which may contain both “oral” features and elements typical of the written language.

The volume is of interest to a wide readership, ranging from scholars of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, sociology and social history to (advanced) graduate and postgraduate students in courses on language variation and change.

[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 1] 2013. vii, 279 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.1

Table of Contents

Preface & Acknowledgements	vii–viii
Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective Marijke J. van der Wal and Gijsbert Rutten	1–18
A lady-in-waiting’s begging letter to her former employer (Paris, mid-sixteenth century) R. Anthony Lodge	19–44
Epistolary formulae and writing experience in Dutch letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Gijsbert Rutten and Marijke J. van der Wal	45–66
From ul to U.E. : A socio-historical study of Dutch forms of address in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century private letters Judith Nobels and Tanja Simons	67–90
Flat adverbs and Jane Austen’s letters Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade	91–106
Letters from Gaston B.: A prisoner’s voice during the Great War Carita Klippi	107–128
Written documents: What they tell us about linguistic usage France Martineau	129–148
The rhetoric of autobiography in the seventeenth century Peter Burke	149–164
“All the rest ye must lade yourself”: Deontic modality in sixteenth-century English merchant letters Arja Nurmi	165–182
Cordials and sharp satyrs: Stance and self-fashioning in eighteenth-century letters Anni Sairio	183–200
Self-reference and ego involvement in the 1820 Settler petition as a leaking genre Matylda Włodarczyk	201–224
Ego-documents in Lithuanian: Orthographic identities at the turn of the twentieth century Aurelija Tamošiūnaitė	225–242
The language of slaves on the island of St Helena, South Atlantic, 1682–1724 Laura Wright	243–276
Index	277–280

“ Touching the Past presents a wide range of new insights and innovations in the subject areas of letter writing and ego-documents at large.”

Wim Vandenbussche, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

“This volume offers a timely contribution to the current research agenda in relation to the evaluation of the role of informal documents for our understanding of the social history of languages. All contributions are empirically strong, presenting data that have rarely seen the scholarly light before.”

Nils Langer, University of Bristol

“[T]he book will prove of considerable interest both to scholars already working in the field and to students approaching the complexities of language use in different social contexts in a historical perspective.”

Marina Dossena, University of Bergamo, in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, Vol. 1(2), 2015

“Key to the treatment of ego-documents as evidence for language habits and practices is the fact that they centre on the individual, so to place them at the centre of historical sociolinguistic study is to acknowledge the critical role that the individuals plays in language change. The papers that make up this volume represent a wealth of approaches that can be applied fruitfully to an exploration of the status of particular types of ego-documents for the kind of history being sought.”

Susan Fitzmaurice, University of Sheffield, in Journal of Historical Pragmatics Vol. 16:2 (2015)

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2018. In Voice and Discourse in the Irish Context, ► pp. 75 ff.

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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 07 january 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

Linguistics

History of linguistics

Historical linguistics

Pragmatics

Sociolinguistics and Dialectology

English linguistics

BIC Subject: CFF – Historical & comparative linguistics

BISAC Subject: LAN000000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / General

U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2013014890 | Marc record