Writing a War of Words

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynda Mugglestone
Keyword(s):  
Time Use ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Total War ◽  
Language History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Changing Roles

This book is the first exploration of the war-time quest by Andrew Clark to document changes in the English language from the start of World War One up to 1919. It describes Clark as a writer, historian, and long-time volunteer on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. It focusses, however, on Clark’s unique series of lexical scrapbooks — replete with clippings, annotations, and real-time definitions which reveal, in unprecedented detail, his endeavours to record the intricacies of living language history in war-time use. For Clark, the language of great writers was cast aside. Instead, he chose to investigate language and its use by means of contemporary advertising and newspapers, pamphlets, and ephemera. Across his work, he provides a compelling account of language and language change, probing its role a prism of contemporary events, whether in relation to the changing roles of women, the nature of total war, and the diverse consequences – human and material – of modern and industrial conflict. The book traces Clark’s emphasis on words and sources which might otherwise be neglected, not least given his committed interest in ephemerality and change. In so doing, it offers fresh perspectives on received wisdom on the inexpressibilities of war, examines the diversities of war-time use from a wide range of angles, while stressing the need for Clark’s own recuperation as a innovative if ‘forgotten lexicographer’ of words in time.

Popular Culture and Modern War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Abra
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
World War ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Total War ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cultural Forms

This bibliography includes histories that explore the manifold meanings and purposes that popular culture has possessed in wartime. Popular culture provides entertainment and escapism for soldiers and civilians, while also allowing them to imagine and give expression to their wartime identities, and social and political worlds. Militaries embrace song or sport to entertain, but also to train and condition their troops. On the home front, it is often on the movie screen or the dance floor, or at the concert hall or the baseball game, where critical issues about class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nation are reflected, experienced, and debated. Popular culture also serves as a potent means of official and unofficial propaganda, and can offer a means of resistance against authoritarianism or occupation, or a pathway toward recovery from war. The bibliography adopts a broad definition of “popular culture,” which eliminates socially and historically constructed distinctions between “high” and “low” cultures, to consider the wide range of leisure forms and performing arts that entertained and shaped the experience of individuals and societies in wartime. The focus is primarily on popular cultural forms that possess an interactive or technologically-driven relationship between producer and consumer, or performer and audience, and so the bibliography does not deal with literature or the visual arts, which each have their own disciplinary specialists and immense scholarly literatures. The bibliography is also only concerned with popular culture produced during the war or wars in question, rather than as part of the retrospective articulation of individual or collective memory. Temporally, it is focused on the era of total war and beyond, including World War I, World War II, the Cold War and decolonization, and the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Significantly, at almost precisely the same moment in the early 20th century, warfare and popular culture both evolved and modernized in critical ways. The First World War erupted just as the Jazz Age took hold; new technologies for cultural dissemination emerged, and the transnational commercial leisure industries surrounding music, film, dance, theater, sport and a range of other cultural forms expanded exponentially. Works in this bibliography are concerned with what followed, and the intertwined modernities of both war and popular culture.

The Eleventh Hour? Monitoring the English Rural Tradition in the 1990s and Beyond

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. A. Widdowson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Level ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Language History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Treat All ◽  
First World

It is something of an irony that in many ways the rural tradition in English life was studied more intensively and systematically a century ago than is the case today. The burgeoning of scholarly interest in language, history, tradition and society at both local and national level in the late nineteenth century provided a wealth of data for modern researchers across a wide range of disciplines. While some of this material inevitably appears dated and indeed at times inaccurate or erroneous, there is a great deal of value in the records of rural life painstakingly set down by those pioneering chroniclers, notably in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and up to the time of the First World War. It has been fashionable in recent years to denigrate the work of these early writers and collectors, or indeed to dismiss them altogether. The label ‘antiquarian’, so glibly attached to several generations of nineteenth-century scholars, has become a pejorative, redolent of the amateur, the dilettante and the pedant. While it cannot be denied that a proportion of antiquarian writing is trivial, mundane or self-indulgent, it is manifestly incorrect to treat all such work with contempt. Indeed we are greatly indebted to these individuals, and especially to those whose methods and observations were as rigorous and scholarly as possible, given the criteria and standards of their day. Nor did they confine themselves within the constricting limits of our modern academic disciplines. Their interests were wide-ranging, and they closely observed the rural scene from many different perspectives, thus building up a much fuller picture of life and society in a given locality than would usually be the case today.

scholarly journals Existing EFL Pedagogies in Thai Higher Education: Views from Thai University Lecturers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusop Boonsuk ◽  
Eric A. Ambele
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Research Question ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Changing Roles ◽  
University Lecturers

Since English is extensively used among linguacultural users to access life opportunities, it has become a requisite foreign language in the Thai educational system. To prepare Thai learners for this new changing role of English and reduce English Language Teaching dependency on the native English variety, this study aimed to explore English lecturers’ voices in Thai universities on existing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogies at the Thai tertiary level with the research question: how do English lecturers in Thai universities perceive EFL in Thai universities? Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 25 Thai EFL university lecturers selected from ten different universities in Thailand and analyzed using content analysis. The finding reveals that EFL-oriented pedagogy plays a dominant role in English language teaching (ELT) education in Thai classrooms, illustrating three main salient themes from the study: (1) EFL pedagogies; (2) EFL materials; and (3) EFL curriculums. The result shows that the pedagogy is less responsive in the changing roles of English use and its widespread worldwide, especially among diverse linguacultural interlocutors. Hence, English university lecturers should reconsider, adjust, and made more practical glocal changes in English language teaching for the purpose of language teaching, language planning and predicting language change.

scholarly journals "Now the War is Over, We Have Something Else to Worry Us": New Zealand Children's Responses to Crises, 1914-1918

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Jayne Sylvia Bennett
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

<p>World War One has long been identified as a key moment in early twentieth-century history. This conflict, however, was not the only dramatic event that occurred during the mid-to-late 1910s. A deadly influenza virus swept across the world between 1918 and 1919, and this global health crisis proved particularly devastating for those countries who had already suffered through more than four years of warfare. Children were ever-present on New Zealand's home front, facing both the First World War and then the influenza pandemic in 1918. Yet, despite their significant presence within this environment, little is known about children's experiences during this tumultuous period in New Zealand's past. This thesis aims to deepen understandings of children's priorities and concerns between 1914 and 1918 through an investigation of youth reactions to World War One and the 1918 flu. A wide range of sources have been utilised in order to achieve insight into the lives of these historical figures. These include letters written by children during the mid-to-late 1910s, school magazines and religious publications directed at youth, and recollections of children's experiences from this period as captured through oral histories. Ultimately, it is asserted that New Zealand youth engaged with these events to the extent that they impacted children's worlds. Children's concerns and priorities, while often differing from those held by adults during the same period, were far from universal. Emotional and geographical proximity and age all played a significant role in mediating and varying children's exposure and responses to crises between 1914 and 1918.</p>

Language History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Neidorf
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of

This chapter assesses the particular language quirks of Beowulf’s transmission. The failure of the scribes to comprehend the language of Beowulf would not be relevant to the transmission of the text if the task of the scribe were to reproduce the letters encountered in the exemplar without modification. However, for the Anglo-Saxon scribe, the task of the mechanical reproduction of the text was complicated by the imperative to modify its superficial, nonstructural features. Language change frequently induced the scribes to make minor alterations to the text that inadvertently deprived it of sense, grammar, alliteration, or meter. These alterations offer valuable insights into the history of the English language—particularly, into some specific ways that the language had changed between the period when Beowulf was composed and the period when its extant manuscript was produced.

Introduction: Writing a War of Words

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lynda Mugglestone
Keyword(s):  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Language History

This chapter introduces Clark as a writer and historian of Home Front life in World War One, alongside the distinctive approaches of his work on language. It focusses on his decision to make a set of language scrapbooks, and looks at his early interest in the incidental and ephemeral as artefacts of time. Drawing on both history and language history, it examines the liberal inclusivity that characterizes his work, not least in his attentive pursuit of many words which still remain unrecorded in formal lexicography.

scholarly journals The Activities of the Tomsk Department of the Society for the Dissemination of Education among Jews in Russia during the First World War

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 233-251
Author(s):  
Ksenia A. Tishkina
Keyword(s):  
Student Loans ◽  
First World War ◽  
Educational Organizations ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Private Donations ◽  
First World

The article examines the activities of the Tomsk department of the Society for the Spread of Education among Jews in Russia (SEJ) during the First World War. The aim of the study is to comprehensively consecrate the main vectors of the work of the members of the Tomsk SEJ in the context of the global cataclysm. Based on the involvement of a wide range of sources, the article describes the cultural, educational and charitable areas of the department's work. The organization was financed primarily by private donations received from the representatives of the Jewish communities of Siberia through holding charitable events and returning student loans. As a result of the scientific research, it was concluded that the peak of the activity of the Tomsk department of the SEJ was during the war years. The society had to adapt to the realities of wartime, while at the same time accomplishing the main goal of the organization – spreading education among the Jewish population. For a long time being the only SEJ representative in Siberia, the Tomsk department managed to take an honorable place among the educational organizations of the region. Under the influence of the refugee and social movement, the representatives of other Jewish institutions began to appear in Tomsk, which most often consisted of the same people. However, the Tomsk department of the SEJ has managed to maintain its importance and relevance.

scholarly journals The letters of French and German soldiers in World War One

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebekka Sippel
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Comparative Framework ◽  
Personal Survival ◽  
At Home

<p>This thesis uses letters written by French and German soldiers to investigate the mobilization of masculinity during World War One 1914-1918.  Through the letters of French and German soldiers of World War One, the thesis discusses the initial ways the soldiers were encouraged to enlist, which includes discussions on patriotism. The work also discusses the concepts of brotherhood and equality, and the idea of protecting women. While masculinity in these two societies was highly militarized, the soldiers took their role as domesticated men very serious and rarely followed instructions from censors as to what to write to their families. Although soldiers were separated from their loved ones and relationships were truly strained by separation, they never forgot their role at home.  A comparative framework has been employed to highlight significant differences in French and German ideals of masculinity. This includes an emphasis on religion among French soldiers and the concept of Heldentod in German letters.  The analysis of hundreds of letters in published or digitized collections complicates the image of French and German soldiers portrayed in both official propaganda and historians’ work. For example, French and German soldiers had different ideas concerning thoughts on the enemy and equality within the army took on different forms as well. Yet the soldiers from both nations had similar notions regarding goals of personal survival and the defence of the country.  Studies of World War One soldiers’ letters have overwhelmingly focused on English language sources. Therefore, an overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to existing research in the English language by using French and German sources. The aim of translating these letters is to facilitate the availability of foreign language sources for English-language historians.</p>

From ‘Coolie’ to Transnational Agent

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Paul J. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
First Episode ◽  
World War ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
World War One ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Workers ◽  
International English

In April 2010 China Central Television’s international English-language channel (Channel Nine) broadcast a six-episode documentary in its series ‘New Frontiers’ hosted by Ji Xiaojun on the 130,000-plus Chinese workers recruited by the French and British governments during World War One. In portentous tones Ji Xiaojun boldly announced in the first episode that the World War One Chinese workers ‘stood shoulder to shoulder’ with British and French troops to combat German military aggression, and that in the process 20,000 of them were killed. Such a valuable contribution to the Allied victory, Ji continued, was not fully acknowledged by France and Britain until fifty years after the end of the war. Overall, the programme depicted the episode as a shining example of China’s positive and beneficial interaction with the world ...

scholarly journals "Now the War is Over, We Have Something Else to Worry Us": New Zealand Children's Responses to Crises, 1914-1918

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Jayne Sylvia Bennett
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

<p>World War One has long been identified as a key moment in early twentieth-century history. This conflict, however, was not the only dramatic event that occurred during the mid-to-late 1910s. A deadly influenza virus swept across the world between 1918 and 1919, and this global health crisis proved particularly devastating for those countries who had already suffered through more than four years of warfare. Children were ever-present on New Zealand's home front, facing both the First World War and then the influenza pandemic in 1918. Yet, despite their significant presence within this environment, little is known about children's experiences during this tumultuous period in New Zealand's past. This thesis aims to deepen understandings of children's priorities and concerns between 1914 and 1918 through an investigation of youth reactions to World War One and the 1918 flu. A wide range of sources have been utilised in order to achieve insight into the lives of these historical figures. These include letters written by children during the mid-to-late 1910s, school magazines and religious publications directed at youth, and recollections of children's experiences from this period as captured through oral histories. Ultimately, it is asserted that New Zealand youth engaged with these events to the extent that they impacted children's worlds. Children's concerns and priorities, while often differing from those held by adults during the same period, were far from universal. Emotional and geographical proximity and age all played a significant role in mediating and varying children's exposure and responses to crises between 1914 and 1918.</p>

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