Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective

Abstract

Volume 1Touching the Past. Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents Edited by Marijke J. van der Wal and Gijsbert Rutten Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics (AHS)Over the last three decades, historical sociolinguistics has developed into a mature and challenging eld of study that focuses on language users and language use in the past. e social motivation of linguistic variation and change continues at the forefront of the historical sociolinguistic enquiry, but current research does not stop there. It extends from social and regional variation in language use to its various communicative contexts, registers and genres, and includes issues in language attitudes, policies and ideologies. One of the main stimuli for the eld comes from new digitized resources and large text corpora, which enable the study of a much wider social coverage than before. Historical sociolinguists use variationist and dialectological research tools and techniques, perform pragmatic and social network analyses, and adopt innovative approaches from other disciplines. e series publishes monographs and thematic volumes, in English, on di erent languages and topics that contribute to our understanding of the relations between the individual, language and society in the past.For an overview of all books published in this series, please see

Encapsulating Irish English in literature

“…Reconstructed language exists in texts whose aim is to present language that actually took place at some point in the past. Ego‐documents such as letters and diaries, for example, provide an interesting combination of oral elements and linguistic features characteristic of the written mode (Van der Wal & Rutten ). But there is also constructed language in texts that contain fictional dialogue, where the degree of narratorial intervention varies depending on how dialogues are presented in the narration (Jucker & Taavitsainen : 22).…”

Stratified historical corpus of Estonian 1800–1940

“…language of the lower classes, Vandenbussche, Elspaß 2007), hidden survival of minority languages (Havinga, Langer 2015), or hidden genres of discourse that impacted the spread and survival of linguistic norms (e.g. letter-writing, Van der Wal, Rutten 2013). The novel findings of historical sociolinguistics for language history have very often been enabled by the creation of new text corpora that bring forward a less-studied variety in the language or under-represented genre in the language.…”

Shifting state loyalty: The case of an officer Şerefeddin or Milan Milovanovic?

“…The term refers here to letters, autobiographical writings, diaries, commentaries, memoirs or diaries. On the letter (seevan der Wal & Rutten 2013;von Greyerz 2010;Mortimer 2002).…”