Text Types and the History of English
eBook - PDF

Text Types and the History of English

  1. 347 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Text Types and the History of English

About this book

The history of modern European languages has been largely determined by the range of functions they have acquired, particularly after 1500. This development necessitated a notable expansion of their syntax and lexis, but is most characteristically reflected in the conventionalization of text types.

Starting from the German concept of Textsorte as developed from the 1960s onwards, the present account is a first comprehensive attempt at charting the field for the history and present-day situation of the English language. In text types, a designation is linked with a more or less stable form which guides the writer's production as well as the reader's expectation, permitting one to recognize straightforward uses as well as deliberate misuses. Some two thousand of such designations are here listed with minimal definitions and dates for first occurrences. The discussion then concentrates on selected types, which are seen as especially illustrative for English: book dedications, cooking recipes, advertisements, church hymns, lexical entries, and jokes. Their functions and development over time are treated in correlation with their specific linguistic characteristics and adaptations to different period styles and social changes in the readership. The functional range of text types in traditions outside England and the consequences of the export of English categories are exemplified by the history of Scots/Scottish English and of English in India. The arguments are accompanied by a lavish supply of textual excerpts and more than fifty pages of facsimiles, which are especially relevant for insights derived from typographical features. A full bibliography and indices are provided at the end.

The book will prove useful for decisions on the constitution of representative text corpora and stimulate research into a greater number of individual text types as well as contrastive analyses at least among European languages.

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Yes, you can access Text Types and the History of English by Manfred Görlach in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Languages. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
De Gruyter Mouton
Year
2008
Print ISBN
9783110173727
eBook ISBN
9783110197167
Edition
1
Topic
Languages & Linguistics
Subtopic
Languages
Index
Languages & Linguistics

Table of contents

  1. List of figures
  2. List of texts
  3. List of facsimiles
  4. Abbreviations
  5. Foreword
  6. 1 Preface
  7. 2 A history of text types: A componential analysis
  8. 2.1 Introduction
  9. 2.2 Methods of classification
  10. 2.3 The inventory of text types and distinctive features
  11. 2.4 Procedure
  12. 2.5 Outlook
  13. 2.6 An alphabetical list of English text types
  14. 2.7 Analysis
  15. 2.8 A list of Old English text types
  16. 3 Text types and the linguistic history of modern English
  17. 3.1 Introductory
  18. 3.2 The concept of text types
  19. 3.3 Exemplification: the dedicatory epistle
  20. 3.4 Interpretation: factors conditioning the form of dedications
  21. 3.5 Linguistic features characteristic of dedications
  22. 3.6 Conclusion
  23. 4 Text types and language history: the cooking recipe
  24. 4.1 Introduction
  25. 4.2 The cooking recipe
  26. 4.3 The development after 1500
  27. 4.4 Cross-cultural comparisons
  28. 4.5 Conclusions
  29. 5 A linguistic history of advertising
  30. 5.1 Introduction
  31. 5.2 Linguistic analysis: the 18th century
  32. 5.3 The 19th century
  33. 5.4 Changes in advertising style
  34. 5.5 A text type exported
  35. 5.6 Conclusion
  36. 6 The church hymn
  37. 6.1 Introduction
  38. 6.2 The historical foundations of the text type
  39. 6.3 The hymn as a text type
  40. 7 Lexical entries
  41. 7.1 Introduction
  42. 7.2 Entries in monolingual dictionaries of modern English
  43. 8 Linguistic aspects of jokes
  44. 8.1 Approaching the topic
  45. 8.2 Types of jokes
  46. 8.3 Conclusion
  47. 9 Text types and the history of Scots
  48. 9.1 Introduction
  49. 9.2 Formal texts
  50. 9.3 Informal language
  51. 9.4 Literary texts
  52. 9.5 Conclusion
  53. 10 Text types and Indian English
  54. 10.1 Introduction
  55. 10.2 Newspaper reports and leaders
  56. 10.3 Book announcements and reviews
  57. 10.4 Dedications, forewords and endpieces in scholarly books
  58. 10.5 Scholarly expository prose
  59. 10.6 Advertisements of various types
  60. 10.7 Obituaries
  61. 10.8 Letters and essays
  62. 10.9 Cooking recipes
  63. 10.10 The language of literature
  64. 10.11 Conclusion
  65. Facsimiles
  66. Bibliography
  67. Index of persons
  68. Index of topics, terms, places and anonymous works
  69. Index of words and phrases