scholarly journals Talking like a servant: What nineteenth century novels can tell us about the social history of the language

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Hodson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
Cultural Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels

AbstractThis article investigates what nineteenth-century novels can tell us about the speech of the lower orders, using the “Dialect in British Fiction 1800–1836” database to focus specifically on how the speech of servants is represented. Recent work on enregisterment has led to a resurgence of interest in literary representations of dialect in relation to specific linguistic features and varieties. I argue that a sustained engagement with literary texts has the potential to illuminate wider cultural constructs of language variation, and that to accomplish this, attention must be paid to issues of genre as well as a range of stylistic features including speech representation, metalanguage and characterisation. The article concludes that, while novels are able to tell us little about how servants really spoke, they are a rich source of information about the attitudes and assumptions that underpinned cultural concepts such as “talking like a servant”.

The Oral History of Royal Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: An Interview with Sallama Dako

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 273-291
Author(s):  
Sean Stilwell ◽  
Ibrahim Hamza ◽  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sokoto Caliphate ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Royal Slavery ◽  
Official Sources

A powerful community of royal slaves emerged in Kano Emirate in the wake of Usman dan Fodio's jihad (1804-08), which established the Sokoto Caliphate. These elite slaves held administrative and military positions of great power, and over the course of the nineteenth century played an increasing prominent role in the political, economic, and social life of Kano. However, the individuals who occupied slave offices have largely been rendered silent by the extant historical record. They seldom appear in written sources from the period, and then usually only in passing. Likewise, certain officials and offices are mentioned in official sources from the colonial period, but only in the context of broader colonial concerns and policies, usually related to issues about taxation and the proper structure of indirect rule.As the following interview demonstrates, the collection and interpretation of oral sources can help to fill these silences. By listening to the words and histories of the descendents of royal slaves, as well as current royal slave titleholders, we can begin to reconstruct the social history of nineteenth-century royal slave society, including the nature of slave labor and work, the organization the vast plantation system that surrounded Kano, and the ideology and culture of royal slaves themselves.The interview is but one example of a series of interviews conducted with current and past members of this royal slave hierarchy by Yusufu Yunusa. As discussed below, Sallama Dako belonged to the royal slave palace community in Kano. By royal slave, we mean highly privileged and powerful slaves who were owned by the emir, known in Hausa as bayin sarki (slaves of the emir or king).

scholarly journals Solidarity: The Social History of an Idea in Nineteenth Century France

1959 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Grand Nombre ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.

scholarly journals Nueva Mujer y nuevas Electras: aproximaciones a la mitología clásica en el teatro burlesco victoriano

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Monrós Gaspar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Electric Light

Abstract: This paper seeks to analyze Francis Talfourd’s Electra in a New Electric Light (1859) as related to the Victorian stereotype of the strong-minded woman. After a brief introduction on the links between nineteenth-century burlesque and the social history of women in Victorian times, I shall focus on the figure of Electra as epitome of late nineteenth-century representations of New Women.Resumen: Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es el estudio de Electra in a New Electric Light (1859) de Francis Talfourd a partir del estereotipo victoriano de la strong-minded woman. Para ello, tras comentar la relación existente entre el teatro burlesco decimonónico de tema clásico y la historia social de la mujer a lo largo del siglo, nos centraremos en la figura de Electra, y en cómo, acompañada de otras heroínas clásicas, anticipa la representación de la Nueva Mujer de finales de siglo.

Mental disorder, criminal responsibility and the social history of theories of volition

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Social History ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

SYNOPSISNineteenth-century theories of human volition are discussed in relation to ideas on insanity and responsibility. Attention is drawn to the importance of accounts of volition for medical psychologists and to the implications of these accounts for medical and lay discussion of criminal responsibility.

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