Prize books and politics: Rethinking the Edwardian working classes

Drawing on a personal dataset of 3,000 book inscriptions, and in partnership with Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives, linguistic ethnohistorian Dr Lauren Alex O’Hagan aims to rethink the life of the Edwardian working classes in a new Instagram project and physical exhibition

An Eye for an I: The Rebus as an Historical Form of Emoji

This paper adopts a transhistorical approach to the study of the emoji, placing it within a broader historical trajectory by focusing on an earlier form of communication with which it has much in common: the rebus. The rebus is a puzzle or visual pun in which words or syllables within a sentence are replaced by images that serve as homophones for the missing text. Here, I outline the origins of the rebus in the ancient world, its resurgence in the Renaissance and continued growth in the 19th century, as well as the range of contexts in which it was used – from heraldry and book inscriptions to letters and advertisements. I argue that, like the emoji, the rebus requires a certain type of literacy to be correctly interpreted and is a prime example of how we engage with the world primarily through our eyes. It, therefore, highlights the longstanding importance of visuality in languaging

All that glistens is not (green) gold: historicising the contemporary chlorophyll fad through a multimodal analysis of Swedish marketing, 1950–1953

Purpose This paper aims to historicise the contemporary chlorophyll trend through the first academic study of its early marketing in Sweden (1950–1953). Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, it demonstrates how brands used advertisements to convince female consumers of chlorophyll’s necessity to fulfil certain aspirational goals. Design/methodology/approach In all, 150 advertisements for chlorophyll products were collected from the Swedish Historical Newspaper Archive, as well as 600 additional advertisements for the three most popular products (toothpaste/mouthwash, sanitary towels and soap) from 1940 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1964. Then, multimodal critical discourse analysis was used to investigate how the products were marketed before, during and after the chlorophyll trend, identifying the general themes and linguistic/semiotic structures of the advertisements. Findings This paper shows how the commercial use of chlorophyll offered a lucrative opportunity for marketers, acting as a “tabula rasa” on which they could use discourses of science, nature, idealised femininity and luxury to draw connections with health, modernity and beauty, despite the product having no real purpose or value. Originality/value Viewing this fad from a historical perspective emphasises how brands, marketers and influencers continue to capitalise on the anxieties of female consumers with promises around beauty, hygiene and health. It, thus, offers us critical distance to reflect on contemporary claims about chlorophyll’s health benefits to make informed choices

Music for Mental Health: An Autoethnography of the Rory Gallagher Instagram Fan Community

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a major increase in anxiety and depression. For many, online music fandoms have offered an important platform to combat loneliness and aid well-being. In this study, I use autoethnography, supported by psychosocial theory on recovery and sociological theory on music fandoms, to track my personal journey of recovery (2020–2022) from a mental health crisis through the support of the Rory Gallagher Instagram fan community. Specifically, I investigate how the community acts as a positive support mechanism for well-being, how my relationship with Rory and his music has changed since joining the community, and how knowledge of Rory’s own personal struggles, coupled with my own experiences, have empowered me to become a mental health advocate. Overall, the study brings attention to the importance of online music communities as informal, holistic regulating agents for mental health conditions and offers alternative ways for health services to approach mental health care

[Book Review] The Picture Postcard: A New Window into Edwardian Ireland, by Ann Wilson

Review of The Picture Postcard: A New Window into Edwardian Ireland , by Ann Wilson (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021). 256 pp. ISBN 978-1-78874-079-1 HC, €49.40

Going Bananas! The Scientific Marketing of a ‘New’ Fruit in Early 20th-Century Sweden

This paper investigates the introduction of the banana to Sweden in the early twentieth century and how ‘eating knowledge’ of this new and exotic fruit was transferred to consumers through marketing that drew heavily upon scientific discourse. Using a case study of advertisements from Fyffes—the most dominant banana brand of the period—it employs multimodal social semiotics to identify a range of verbal and visual strategies that were adopted to turn the product into a core part of the Swedish diet. It argues that these strategies were critical in educating Swedish people about the link between food and health and shaped their (positive) attitudes towards bananas. The banana, thus, stands as a strong example of how marketing can transport, shape and transform knowledge about food, particularly at a critical time when it is first being introduced into a country

Class, culture and conflict in the Edwardian book inscription: A multimodal ethnohistorical approach

This study uses three examples of Edwardian (1901-1914) book inscriptions – a prize inscription, gift inscription and bookplate – to demonstrate how the adoption of an ethnohistorical approach, in which choices of image, colour, typography and materiality are grounded in archival research, can strengthen multimodal analysis. Furthermore, it argues that, while book inscriptions may seem insignificant markers of ownership, they, in fact, act as a material microcosm of many of the social tensions that existed between class groups in early twentieth-century Britain. The analysis reveals that inscriptions were primarily used to objectify their owners’ economic means and cultural necessities, and assert themselves in a social space, whether to uphold their rank or keep their distance from other groups. These findings demonstrate the importance of embedding hypotheses concerning the function and form of artefacts in concrete historical documents

Prize books and politics: Rethinking the Edwardian working classes

Drawing on a personal dataset of 3,000 book inscriptions, and in partnership with Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives, linguistic ethnohistorian Dr Lauren Alex O’Hagan aims to rethink the life of the Edwardian working classes in a new Instagram project and physical exhibition