Letter Writing and Language Change

Letter Writing and Language Change PDF

Author: Anita Auer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1139992031

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Letter Writing and Language Change outlines the historical sociolinguistic value of letter analysis, both in theory and practice. The chapters in this volume make use of insights from all three 'Waves of Variation Studies', and many of them, either implicitly or explicitly, look at specific aspects of the language of the letter writers in an effort to discover how those writers position themselves and how they attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to construct social identities. The letters are largely from people in the lower strata of social structure, either to addressees of the same social status or of a higher status. In this sense the question of the use of 'standard' and/or 'nonstandard' varieties of English is in the forefront of the contributors' interest. Ultimately, the studies challenge the assumption that there is only one 'legitimate' and homogenous form of English or of any other language.

The Bridge Between Here and There

The Bridge Between Here and There PDF

Author: Savannah Maddison

Publisher: Rodale Kids

Published: 2019-01-08

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 163565355X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A letter can brighten a day, change a life, even unite the world--and so can you! Have you ever missed a friend who lives far away and wished you could bring them back home? Do you know someone who could use a smile and have just the right story to brighten their day? Maybe you have a great idea to make your school better for everyone but don't know how to share it. With a letter, you can connect with friends and feel heard. Your stories, art, music, and ideas can travel near and far to make a difference! Packed with tips on how to conquer writer's block, find your own creativity, and connect with your friends, family, and community, this book will inspire you--and help you inspire the world around you!

Letter Writing as a Social Practice

Letter Writing as a Social Practice PDF

Author: David Barton

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2000-04-15

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9027298661

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan

Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan PDF

Author: Karen V. Beaman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-24

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0429638523

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume brings together research on panel studies with the aim of providing a coherent empirical and theoretical knowledge-base for examining the impact of maturation and lifespan-specific effects on linguistic malleability in the post-adolescent speaker. Building on the work of Wagner and Buchstaller (2018), the present collection offers a critical examination of the theoretical implications of panel research across a range of geographic regions and time periods. The volume seeks to offer a way forward in the debates circling about the phenomenon of later-life language change, drawing on contributions from a variety of linguistic disciplines to examine critical topics such as the effect of linguistic architecture, the roles of mobility and identity construction, and the impact of frequency effects. Taken together, this edited collection both informs and pushes forward key questions on the nature of lifespan change, making this key reading for students and researchers in cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

Letter Writing

Letter Writing PDF

Author: Terttu Nevalainen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007-03-14

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9027293007

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The contributions in this book discuss letter-writing from 1400 to 1800, and the material studied ranges from the late medieval Paston Letters and the correspondence between Sweden and the German Hanse to Early Modern English family letters and correspondence in natural history between England and North America in the eighteenth century. By bringing a set of corpus linguistic, discourse analytic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to bear on historical letter-writing activity, the articles both extend and complement the traditional letter-writing research in the history of European languages, which approaches the topic from a largely rhetorical perspective. The articles in this book were first published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5:2 (2004), share a contextualised view of letters: whether approached from the perspective of language contact, social and discursive practices, intertextuality, audience design or linguistic politeness, letters are analysed as part of their specific familial, business or scientific network. Writing letters thus emerges as highly context-sensitive social interaction.

Studying Language Change in the 21st Century

Studying Language Change in the 21st Century PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 9004510575

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The volume brings together contributions by scholars working in different theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language change and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and modern analytical tools and methodology. Τhe integrative basis of all work is the special focus on phenomena at the interface of semantics and syntax and the implications of corpus-based, quantitative analyses for researching diachrony.

The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English

The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English PDF

Author: Susan M. Fitzmaurice

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781588111869

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.

Bess of Hardwick

Bess of Hardwick PDF

Author: Lisa Hopkins

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-01-09

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1526101319

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Born the daughter of a country squire, Bess of Hardwick made four marriages which brought her wealth and status. She built and furnished houses and founded a dynasty which included a granddaughter, Arbella Stuart, who had a claim to the thrones of both England and Scotland.