The Social History of Language

by Peter Burke (Editor), Roy Porter (Editor)

Overview

In the last few years, social historians have discovered what might be called the 'linguistic dimension' of their discipline, just as sociolinguists have been discovering the 'historical dimension' and historians of language the 'social dimension'. They have become interested in language both as a source for social history and also as a historical phenomenon in its own right. This volume of essays brings together some of this recent work by social historians of Britain, France and Italy from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The authors concern themselves with the politics as well as the sociology of language; with dialect as well as standard languages; with writing as well as speech; with the language of women as well as that of men; with the language of politeness and the language of insult; the language of deference and the language of revolt; the language of sub-cultures and counter-cultures as well as those of the elites and 'the people'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521317634
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/22/1987
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture , #12
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	875,926
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; 1. Introduction Peter Burke; 2. The uses of literacy in early modern Italy Peter Burke; 3. Proverbs and social history James Obelkevich; 4. The language of quackery in England, 1660–1800 Roy Porter; 5. Verbal insults in eighteenth-century Paris David Garrioch; 6. Le langage mâle de la vertu: women and the discourse of the French Revolution Dorinda Outram; 7. Words and institutions during the French Revolution: the case of 'revolutionary' scientific and technical education Janis Langins; 8. The sociology of a text: oral culture, literacy and print in early New Zealand D. F. McKenzie; 9. The historian and the Questione della Lingua Jonathan Steinberg; Bibliographical essay; Index.