Highly Irregular

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arika Okrent ◽  
Sean O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This book presents an illustrated history of English as told through all the things that are weird about it. Maybe you have been speaking English all your life, or maybe you learned it later on. But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done, or you are an expert who never omits a comma or misplaces a modifier, you must have noticed that there are some things about this language that are just weird. Why are there so many silent letters? Why do we have irregular verbs? The book answers these questions and many more. Along the way, it tells the story of the many influences—from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers—that made the English language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, the book is essential reading for anyone who has paused to wonder about this marvelous mess of a language.

Tensions and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Language ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.

Tensions and Challenges of Intellectual History in Contemporary Latin America

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
English Language ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article provides an overview of some prominent aspects of intellectual history as practiced today in Latin America, especially regarding conceptual history. It delves into the way this methodology arrived to the region not long ago and discusses the way some of its practitioners combine it with the history of political languages, often ignoring the profound differences between both approaches. Therefore, the text stresses some of the most significant contrasts between them. In its last part, the article is critical of the purported “globality” of global intellectual history, an issue that is inextricably linked with the pervasive use of the English language in the field. Throughout, the text poses several of the challenges that lie ahead for intellectual history in Latin America.

What the Hell, English?

2021 ◽  
pp. 2-38
Author(s):  
Arika Okrent ◽  
Sean O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Word Order ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch Language ◽  
Orderly System ◽  
The Way

This chapter provides an overview of the oddities of the English language. It begins by looking at the poem of Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité and how he spent his career nitpicking defense of his own native language. Nolst Trenité saw that the Dutch language had its own inconsistencies. His complaints about the way his fellow citizens butchered the Dutch language were different from his complaints about English, but they came from the same expectation that language should be a logical, orderly system. The patterns are often overshadowed by what looks like randomness, and there are irregularities everywhere, not just in the spelling system. At every level of language, from spelling to vocabulary to grammar to word order to meaning there are violations of harmony and order. This book is thus a collection of answers to questions about English. It also presents a history of English that explores the tension between logic and habit in language development.

Commentary: What Technical Writers Must Learn from the History of Programming

1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmond H. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Computer Programs ◽  
Technical Writers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

Complicated documents often affect readers the way computer programs affect computers; technical writers are prone to many of the same serious errors that plague programmers. Among the many principles that writers can learn from programming are: 1) Models save money: it is far more economical to develop detailed outlines and mockups than to improvise from a vague outline. 2) Quality demands maintainability: every complicated document will need frequent revision, and only documents designed for ease of change will be kept current. 3) The trouble is in the interfaces: the procedures and tasks in a manual are not as error-prone as the rules for moving from part to part of the book itself. 4) Readers are subject to the laws of physics: many publication economies produce documents that defy the physical powers of the reader. 5) Communication is control: readers must be prevented from getting lost.

scholarly journals Lettuce Entertain You: Floral Agency in Ralph Knevet's Rhodon and Iris

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-38
Author(s):  
Ashley Howard
Keyword(s):  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Floral Characters ◽  
The Way

This essay investigates the performativity of plants in Ralph Knevet’s Rhodon and Iris, a play that was written and performed for a feast held by the Norwich Society of Florists in 1631. The play explores at least two forms of performativity: the first is the act of staging plants for a theatrical performance, where vegetables present their virtues through floral allegories that are enacted by human players. The second form is the way plants affect and are affected by their environments, particularly as theorized by Michael Marder and Mel Y. Chen. In Rhodon and Iris, these two dimensions work together to produce a form of floral agency that decenters the human. The essay explores how floral agency collaborates with literary narratives when beings perform for plants (within a history of floral celebrations), as plants (embodying plants as allegorical figures), and with plants (floral characters using plants as ingredients in cosmetics, poisons, and antidotes). Knevet uses literature to articulate a unique plant philosophy that challenges divisions between art and nature and among literature, philosophy, and science. Rhodon and Iris thus illustrates the many ways that theatrical performances and printed playbooks, and even printed herbals and herbaria, responded to and shaped the performativity of plants.

Dylan Thomas and American Poetry: ‘a kind of secret, but powerful, leaven’

2019 ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Philip Coleman
Keyword(s):  
American Poetry ◽  
Elizabeth Bishop ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Broad View ◽  
John Berryman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dylan Thomas ◽  
American Poets ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

In The Poetry of Dylan Thomas (2013), John Goodby argues that ‘[t]he scope of Thomas’s impact on US poetry is remarkable, and it testifies to his characteristic hybrid ambivalence’. In the spirit of elaborating on this observation, this chapter considers how a number of quite different American poets have engaged with Thomas’s work, including Charles Olson, Delmore Schwartz, Elizabeth Bishop, and Denise Levertov. The essay also brings into focus the more explicit dialogue established throughout the poetry of John Berryman, for whom Thomas was a constant and almost familial figure from the 1940s to the end of his career. In Dream Song 88, Berryman imagines Thomas in the afterlife ‘with more to say / now there’s no hurry, and we’re all a clan.’ In this chapter, the idea of American poets belonging to or seeking to belong to such a ‘clan’ is examined, up to and including the work of a number of contemporary poets and schools of verse. The chapter takes a broad view, then, of the many ways Thomas has influenced the writing of poetry, and in doing so scrutinises the way the history of American poetry has so often been narrated.

Charles Martin Robertson 1911–2004

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN A. SPARKES
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
The Way

Martin Robertson published the History of Greek Art in 1975, which has continued to hold its place in English language scholarship. It was the culmination of years of patient research that had started when he embraced the teaching of the history of the subject nearly thirty years earlier. Reviewers remarked on the way in which the book was both a personal study of Greek art and also a comprehensive treatment of the whole field. Through its measured structure and the grace and power of its style, it shows the author at the peak of his talent.

Response

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Real ◽  
Initial Deviation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Counterfactual History ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This reply to the critiques by Daniel Woolf, Cass R. Sunstein and Daniel Nolan of my book Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History (Brandeis University Press, 2013), takes each of their contributions in turn, and reasserts the centrality to counterfactual history of positing definite, long term alternative timelines rather than a vague claim that things might have turned out differently to the way they actually did (for example, if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, slavery might still exist in the usa). Such alternate timelines have no claim to either truth or utility since they ignore the many possible contingencies that would most likely have taken place following the initial deviation from the real timeline of history.

'Gentry Society

1953 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 588-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Events ◽  
Subsequent Publication ◽  
History Of ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

Wolfram eberhard's recent A History of China has attracted great interest. Reviewers have praised it for its readability and broad sweep and for the way in which it goes beyond a mere chronicle of political and cultural events and tries to penetrate to underlying causes. At the same time they have noted many errors of detail and have expressed surprise and incredulity at the many new generalizations presented with an air of established finality. It was, of course, impossible for Eberhard to present detailed evidence or argumentation in support of his views in a brief general history. The subsequent publication of Das Toba-Reich Nordchinas and Conquerors and Rulers has enabled us to form a better judgment of the value of at least a part of his work.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document