The Medieval Life of Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Amsler

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication are revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Amsler

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication are revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.


Author(s):  
Mark Amsler

This book recovers pragmatics within the history of medieval linguistics. The introduction outlines the study of pragmatics from a critical history of linguistics perspective, situating language study in a complex social field and comparing medieval pragmatic ideas and metapragmatics with assumptions in contemporary pragmatic theory. Pragmatics embraces communication, expression, and understanding; it prioritizes meaning, context, affect, and speaking position over formal grammar. Relevant texts for late medieval pragmatics include grammatical and logical texts, especially those by Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, and anonymous grammarians, and Peter (of) John Olivi. Other sources for medieval pragmatics include life narrative (Margery Kempe), poetry (Chaucer), and heresy records. Theoretical and everyday texts reveal provocative intersections of Latin and vernacular intellectual and religious cultures and different assumptions and ideologies concerning meaning, speech, and speakers. Across these heterogenous, sometimes antagonistic discursive fields, medieval intellectual history crosses paths with social history.


2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-273
Author(s):  
Natasa Vujisic-Zivkovic

This paper discuses the role of pedagogical historiography in forming pedagogical knowledge, both from the aspect of history and from the aspect of the present status of this discipline. Our aim is to observe the problems of pedagogical historiography, as a scientific and teaching discipline, in the context of forming of pedagogical knowledge. The process of transformation of heuristic function of the history of pedagogy is analyzed - from the traditional approach which emphasizes its role in forming pedagogical culture to the orientation of historical research and education in pedagogy towards theoretical and professional knowledge. The development of history of pedagogy as a scientific discipline is mostly observed through three phases: the first, focused on research of the development of pedagogical ideas and/or school system, lasted until the 1960s, when it was replaced by social history of education, while today it is mostly spoken about the 'cultural history of education'. The evolution of pedagogical historiography is also followed by the changes in its relation towards theory and practice of education, which is especially dealt with in this paper. In the conditions of radical changes in epistemology of social sciences and university reform, pedagogical historiography faces the question of its own relevance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 55-86
Author(s):  
Laura Carter

Chapters 1 and 2 make up Part I of this book, which explains how the ‘history of everyday life’ developed and why it had such purchase in mid-twentieth-century British society. This chapter is about the theory and practice of teaching social history in schools between the 1920s and the 1960s. It explains the pedagogical framework in which ordinary consumers of history came to be conceptualized in the mid-twentieth century. It is argued that social history in schools was increasingly associated with average ability and younger pupils after 1918. Through mass education, the ‘history of everyday life’, with its premium on local settings, practical skills, emotions, and the visual, became the type of history prescribed for the ordinary, ‘modern’ pupil.


This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.


2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Donnelly

Medieval Scottish economic and social history has held little interest for a unionist establishment but, just when a recovery of historic independence begins to seem possible, this paper tackles a (perhaps the) key pre-1424 source. It is compared with a Rutland text, in a context of foreign history, both English and continental. The Berwickshire text is not, as was suggested in 2014, a ‘compte rendu’ but rather an ‘extent’, intended to cross-check such accounts. Read alongside the Rutland roll, it is not even a single ‘compte’ but rather a palimpsest of different sources and times: a possibility beyond earlier editorial imaginings. With content falling (largely) within the time-frame of the PoMS project (although not actually included), when the economic history of Scotland in Europe is properly explored, the sources discussed here will be key and will offer an interesting challenge to interpretation. And some surprises about their nature and date.


2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-7

In this opening issue of volume 31 we are presented with both nuanced and bold entry into several long enduring issues and topics stitching together the interdisciplinary fabric comprising ethnic studies. The authors of these articles bring to our attention social, cultural and economic issues shaping lively discourse in ethnic studies. They also bring to our attention interpretations of the meaning and significance of ethnic cultural contributions to the social history of this nation - past and present.


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