Eighteenth-Century English


Book Description

The eighteenth century was a key period in the development of the English language, in which the modern standard emerged and many dictionaries and grammars first appeared. This book is divided into thematic sections which deal with issues central to English in the eighteenth century. These include linguistic ideology and the grammatical tradition, the contribution of women to the writing of grammars, the interactions of writers at this time and how politeness was encoded in language, including that on a regional level. The contributions also discuss how language was seen and discussed in public and how grammarians, lexicographers, journalists, pamphleteers and publishers judged on-going change. The novel insights offered in this book extend our knowledge of the English language at the onset of the modern period.




Linguistics Across Historical and Geographical Boundaries


Book Description

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.




Studies in the History of Business Writing


Book Description

Because written communication has nearly always been the medium for transmitting information in the business world, these essays are a step toward providing a seminal statement on the history and practice of business writing. The essays in this volume are: "Business Writing and the Spread of Literacy in Late Medieval England" (Malcolm Richardson); "Humanistic Influences on the Art of the Familiar Epistle in the Renaissance" (Donald R. Dickson); "The First Century of English Business Writing, 1417-1525" (Malcolm Richardson); "Methodology for Researching Early Business Writing in English" (Malcolm Richardson); "A 16th Century Work on Communication: Precursor of Modern Business Communication" (Herbert W. Hildebrandt); "The Earliest Correspondence of the British East India Company (1600-19)" Kitty O. Locker); "The Etiquette of American Business Correspondence" (L.W. Denton); "The Communication Theory of Johann Carl May: Its Influence on Business Communication in Germany" (Herbert W. Hildebrandt and Iris Varner); "Business Writing in America in the Nineteenth Century" (George H. Douglas); "'Elegant Simplicity': Lord Chesterfield's Ideal for Business Writing" (William E. Rivers); "From Press Book and Pigeonhole to Vertical Filing: Revolution in Storage and Access Systems for Correspondence (JoAnne Yates); "The Historical and Cultural Significance of Direct-Mail Fund-Raising Letters" (John Pauly); "'Sir, This Will Never Do': Model Dunning Letters, 1592-1873" (Kitty O. Locker); and "The Teaching of Business Writing at the Collegiate Level 1900-1920" (Francis W. Weeks). (SRT)










General Catalogue of Printed Books


Book Description




In My Power


Book Description

In My Power tells the story of letter writing and communications in the creation of the British Empire and the formation of the United States. In an era of bewildering geographical mobility, economic metamorphosis, and political upheaval, the proliferation of letter writing and the development of a communications infrastructure enabled middle-class Britons and Americans to rise to advantage in the British Atlantic world. Everyday letter writing demonstrated that the blessings of success in the early modern world could come less from the control of overt political power than from the cultivation of social skills that assured the middle class of their technical credentials, moral deserving, and social innocence. In writing letters, the middle class not only took effective action in a turbulent world but also defined what they believed themselves to be able to do in that world. Because this ideology of agency was extended to women and the youngest of children in the eighteenth century, it could be presented as universalized even as it was withheld from Native Americans and enslaved blacks. Whatever the explicit purposes behind letter writing may have been—educational improvement, family connection, business enterprise—the effect was to render the full terms of social division invisible both to those who accumulated power and to those who did not. The uncontested power that came from letter writing was, Konstantin Dierks provocatively argues, as important as racist violence to the rise of the white middle class in the British Atlantic world.