Touching the past : studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents / edited by Marijke J. van der Wal, Gijsbert Rutten.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Wal, M. J. van der.

Rutten, Gijsbert Johan, 1977-

Series:

Advances in historical sociolinguistics, 2214-1057 ; v. 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociolinguistics--History.

Sociolinguistics.

Linguistic change--Social aspects--History.

Linguistic change.

Autobiography in literature.

Historical linguistics.

Physical Description:

vi, 279 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : John Benjamins Pub. Company, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This paper considers reported speech of slaves in court records from the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. It constitutes some of the earliest evidence of slaves' language anywhere, and shows that the early slave community on the island of St Helena spoke a creoloid, as well as non-standard Southern English. Nothing is known about the personal history of the slaves apart from some of their names. These names are analysed, and by comparison with name-usage in eighteenth-century London, it is concluded that they betray contemporary British attitudes to slavery. Thus, data is presented on the early linguistic situation of St Helena, showing that creoloidisation happened early on as a result of slavery, and conclusions about master-slave relationships during the period are drawn on the basis of the analysis of names.

Contents:

Intro

Preface &amp

Acknowledgements

Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective

1. Ego-documents

2. Social difference and variation in context

3. Representing the self

4. Speech and writing

5. Concluding

References

A lady-in-waiting's begging letter to her former employer (Paris, mid-sixteenth century)

1. Introduction

2. Mlle de la Tousche's begging letter (Letter I)

3. The letter's writing system

3.1 Assibilation of intervocalic /r/ → /z/

3.2 "Ouisme"

3.3 Lowering of [er] → [ar]

3.4 Lowering of nasals

3.5 Past historic in -I

3.6 Endings of the third person plural

3.7 Learned features

4. Who was Mlle de la Tousche? Did she write the letter herself ?

4.1 Who was Mlle de la Tousche?

4.2 Is the letter an autograph?

5. The letter of "Jaquelin[e] de Reboul" (Letter II)

6. Contemporary attitudes to towards these vernacular variants

6.1 Assibilation [r] → [z]

6.2 Ouisme

6.3 [er] → [ar]

6.4 Lowering of nasals

6.5 Past historics in -i

6.6 Endings of the third person plural

7. Conclusion

Appendix

Translation of letter 1

To the Queen of Scotland

Translation of Letter 2

Epistolary formulae and writing experience in Dutch letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

2. The written culture and letter writing

2.1 Reading

2.2 Writing

3. Formulaic language and writing experience

4. Case study

4.1 The two subcorpora

4.2 Two formulae

4.3 Hypotheses

4.4 Results

5. Discussion and conclusion

From ul to U.E.

1. Introduction: A new view

2. The Letters as loot corpora

3. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century forms of address: A wealth of options

3.1 Ul and U.E.

3.2 Gij and u

3.3 The new form jij and its inflected forms.

3.4 Earlier research on the use of forms of address in the two centuries

4. The seventeenth century

4.1 Overview

4.2 Social class: Lower classes vs. upper classes

4.3 Gender: Familiar differences

5. The eighteenth century: The omnipresence of U.E.

5.1 Overview

5.2 Social class: A gradual increase

5.3 Gender: Equality

6. Comparisons and conclusions

6.1 The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century forms of address compared

6.2 The present results compared to earlier research

6.3 Conclusion

Flat adverbs and Jane Austen's letters

2. Jane Austen's letters

3. Flat adverbs in Jane Austen's letters

4. The normative grammars and actual usage

5. Influence from the normative grammars?

6. Conclusion

Letters from Gaston B.

2. Interest in the language of soldiers in the Great War

3. The Republican education system

3.1 The legislation of Jules Ferry

3.2 School grammar

3.3 French and dialects at school

4. Gaston B. as a speaker and writer

5. Gaston B.'s language and prescriptivism

5.1 Some socio-pragmatic factors

5.2 Handwriting and segmentation of words

5.3 Orthography and syntax

Appendix 1. A sample of Gaston's letter

Appendix 2. A trancription of the sample of Gaston's letter

Written documents

2. Large historical sociolinguistics corpora

2.1 Metalinguistic corpora

2.2 Literary corpora

2.3 Family letters

3. Hybridity and egodocuments

3.1 Charles-André Barthe's diary

3.1.1 Spelling and phonological features

3.1.2 Morphosyntactic features

4. Egodocuments and linguistic communities in a minority context

4.1 The Detroit region: From French to English influence

4.2 Vernacular features and English borrowings.

4.3 Language shift from French to English

5. Conclusion

The rhetoric of autobiography in the seventeenth century

1. Rhetoric and performance

2. Occasions of autobiography

3. Styles and plots

4. Grace abounding

"All the rest ye must lade yourself"*

2. John Johnson and his network

3. Reconstructing power and social distance

3.1 Reconstructing relative power

3.2 Measuring social distance by network ties

4. Deontic modality

4.1 Modality and power

4.2 Modality and social distance

4.3 Power, social distance and modality

Cordials and sharp satyrs

2. The correspondence

3. Intertextuality in letters

4. Verbal irony in the age of politeness

5. Results

5.1 Epistolary conventions and the lexicalization of mental states

5.2 Intertextuality and irony

Self-reference and ego involvement in the 1820 Settler petition as a leaking genre

2. Petition as a leaking genre

3. Private vs. public distinction in historical correspondence

3.1 The Landert &amp

Jucker (2011) model

3.2 1820 Settler petition within the Landert &amp

Jucker (2001) model

4. Self-reference as a feature of ego involvement

4.1. Self-reference in historical correspondence

4.2 Self-reference in the structural models of the 1820 Settler petition

4.3 Third-person reference

5. 1820 Settlers: The Eriths

6. Jane Erith's petitions: A case study

6.1 The hypothesis

6.2 Data: Corpora and informants

6.3 Switches in self-reference

6.4 Social roles

6.5 I-reference: A quantitative survey

6.6 Summary of the case study

7. Conclusions

Manuscripts

Printed material.

The language of slaves on the island of St Helena, South Atlantic, 1682-1724

2. The island of St Helena, South Atlantic, and early court-cases involving slaves

3. Linguistic commentary

3.1 Some comments on Table 2

3.3 Summary

4. Master-slave conditions on the island

4.1 Different groups of slaves

4.2 On slaves' names in the St Helena consultations

Printed material

Databases

Transcription from London, British Library, MS IOR G/32/2 and MS IOR G/32/3.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789027271778

9027271771

OCLC:

851696222