The development of play-texts: From manuscript to print

It is an axiom of historical linguistics, and indeed historical studies generally, that our present-day assumptions are not a reliable basis for the analysis and interpretation of language data from earlier periods. Assumptions, not just about language but any kind of human experience, help people make sense of the world in a cognitively efficient way. But those very assumptions interact with the phenomena to which they pertain, and together they change over time. Present-day assumptions form the endpoint of diachronic change. The first task for the historian is to describe earlier states of the language and its contexts, including the likely assumptions of contemporaries, and begin to understand why it is as it is. The second task is to explain the processes of change which have led to the current situation today. This paper aims to show how present-day assumptions about early modern play-texts are inappropriate or misleading. It explores how the dialogue of earlier plays was shaped by particular manuscript practices, and compares this with the dialogue of present-day plays that are shaped by the context of printing

Libelling Oscar Wilde: The case of Regina vs. John Sholto Douglas

This paper explores the 1895 libel trial between Oscar Wilde (literary personality) and the Marquis of Queensbury (father of Wilde's close friend). Focussing on the lead defence counsel's cross-examination of Wilde (plaintiff), I demonstrate that Carson's FTAs are “aggressive” and, in some cases, “deliberately” so (cf. Bousfield, Impoliteness in interaction, John Benjamins, 2008: 72). However, as they do not breach the rules of the courtroom or involve an overt “intent to harm” (Goffman, Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour, Pantheon Books, 1967: 14), I argue that they do not constitute impoliteness. I further argue that Carson's FTAs should not be considered “incidental” in nature, given they were more planned and more anticipated than Goffman's (Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour, Pantheon Books, 1967: 14) definition seems to allow, and thus suggest that Carson's FTAs be recognized as sitting somewhere between Goffman's intentional or incidental levels – thanks, in part, to their manipulation of multiple goals (Penman, Facework and politeness: Multiple goals in courtroom discourse, Multilingual Matters Ltd., 1990) – in what I have labelled the ambiguous-as-to-speaker-intent zone (Archer under review). I also demonstrate Carson's use/manipulation of representational frames and reality paradigms so as to emphasize Wilde's moral “deviance”. In brief, a reality paradigm equates to “the systems of beliefs [and] values … by reference to which a person or a society comprehends the world” (Fowler, Linguistic criticism, Oxford University Press, 1986: 130), and representational frames, to the way(s) in which interlocutors opt to “represent the character traits, ideas and opinions of and even statements made by others” (Locher and Watts, Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguistic behaviour, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008: 99, n9). I conclude by responding to two questions highlighted by my investigation: (1) Should we be talking about impoliteness in the courtroom (even when investigating the cross-examination phase)? and (2) To what extent can our understanding of facework be enhanced, in both a courtroom context and more generally, via a consideration of reality paradigms (and their strategic manipulation)

The gains and losses of face in ongoing intercultural interaction: A case study of Chinese participant perspectives

Given the small number of existing studies of face in intercultural settings and the increasing attention given to participant perspectives in face research, this paper explores the gains and losses of face as perceived by Chinese government officials during a three-week delegation visit to the United States of America. These perspectives were obtained from the group’s spontaneous discussions during regular evening meetings when they reflected on the day’s events. Several key features emerged from the discussions. Firstly, face enhancement was a primary goal for the visit – enhancement of their own face as a delegation, of the face of the Ministry they belonged to, as well as the face of their American hosts. Secondly, the delegates attempted to manage these face goals strategically. Thirdly, they spoke of face as a volatile image that could rise and fall sharply and yet endured across incidents, days and weeks. The paper reports on and discusses these participant perspectives in the light of recent theorizing on face

The influence of Italian manners on politeness in England, 1550-1620

This paper focuses on the influence of Italian conduct manuals, as translated into English, in the second half of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. It approaches this task in two ways. One is to trace the rise of the term manners, and also to examine the words with which it typically cohabited, thus giving a sense of the discourses of which it was a part. The analysis reveals a dramatic rise in usage of the term in the period 1550-1624, and its role in discourses to do with social regulation, negative evaluation and moralizing. The other is to undertake a detailed comparison between Della Casa’s Galateo and Brown and Levinson (1987) in particular. The major finding here is the close similarity between the two. Along the way, the paper also airs some theoretical distinctions relating to notions of politeness, notably the distinction between first- and second-order politeness, and touches on some of the features of the social context of early modern England

A study of the state teachers\u27 scholarship program in Virginia

A State Teachers Scholarship Program was inaugurated in Virginia in 1947. The program, based on appropriations made by the General Assembly of Virginia for each biennium, has been in continuous operation for eleven years. It provides financial assistance in the form of scholarship grants for in-service teachers and for individuals who are preparing to enter the teaching profession. The State Teachers\u27 Scholarship Program, designed to foster the cause of education in Virginia,should be appraised in terms or its effectiveness. It is a recognized fact that any service which has been in operation for a period of time should be evaluated or checked in some way. It is also true that continuous records should be kept on all programs which evolve from need and develop through use. At the time of this study no record had been compiled or the complete development of the history of the State Teachers Scholarship Program, and no systematic study or evaluation had been made of its over-all contribution to education. The study was undertaken to remedy this situation. The study Was undertaken with two definite objectives: 1. To trace the history and development of the State Teachers Scholarship Program. 2. To determine the relationship of the program to the supply of qualified teachers in the public schools of Virginia

A Physical Directory; Or a Translation of the Dispensatory Made By the Colledg of Physitians of London, and By Them Imposed Upon All the Apothecaries of England to Make Up Their Medicines By. And in This Third Edition is Added a Key to Galen\u27s Method of Physick.

https://dc.swosu.edu/rare_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

Communicative styles, rapport and student engagement: An online peer mentoring scheme

This article investigates the communicative styles of three different peer mentors in the context of online language learning, and considers their effect on student engagement. A key objective is to show how an innovative corpus-based technique, keyword analysis, can be used as a first step towards identifying communicative styles. We view communicative style as a linguistic means by which rapport is managed amongst participants (Spencer-Oatey 2008). Our primary data includes 685 forum posts, of which 273 (over 26,000 words) were by the mentors at the heart of our study. We show that the three mentors have different communicative styles: different rapport management orientations are achieved in different ways. Furthermore, we bring together multiple data sources, including participants’ posts and self-reported perception data. This allows us to find evidence on if and how communicative styles impact on student engagement and perception. We discovered that rapport enhancement aligns with increased active participation, especially if a self-effacement strategy is used, and positive student perception, but that the lack of such rapport does not automatically imply negative student perception

Pragmatics:Data trends

This paper identifies the trends in the data used in pragmatics studies over the last 20 years, and thereby makes predictions about how pragmatics might develop in the next few years, other things being equal. To establish those trends, 200 papers from the Journal of Pragmatics, covering the period 1999 to 2018, were categorised. The categorisation scheme was designed to capture some of the key ways in which data in pragmatics varies, and included: the general focus of the paper (e.g. whether it is data-driven), the focal point in the data of the analysis, the quantity of the data, the medium of the data, the number of modes or channels represented in the data, the degree of interactivity of the data, the fictionality of the data, and the language of the data (specifically whether it only contains English). Trends discovered include: a continual strong focus on data, a shift of analytical focus towards more macro units, increasing use of greater quantities of data, decreasing dominance of purely spoken data, increasing use of multimodal data, increasing use of more interactive data, decreasing use of constructed examples, no increasing use of fictional data, and the continual diversification of the languages treated