Communities of Practice in the History of English
[Book Description]
Languages change and they keep changing as a result of communicative interactions and practices in the context of communities of language users. The articles in this volume showcase a range of such communities and their practices as loci of language change in the history of English. The notion of communities of practice takes its starting point in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and refers to groups of people defined both through their membership in a community and through their shared practices. Three types of communities are particularly highlighted: networks of letter writers; groups of scribes and printers; and other groups of professionals, in particular administrators and scientists. In these diverse contexts in England, Scotland, the United States and South Africa, language change is not seen as an abstract process but as a response to the communicative needs and practices of groups of people engaged in interaction.
[Table of Contents]
Preface vii
Communities of practice as a locus of language 1 (18)
change
Andreas H. Jucker
Joanna Kopaczyk
Part I. Letter writers
The role of communities of practice in the 19 (28)
emergence of Scottish Standard English
Janet Cruickshank
Mixing genres and reinforcing community ties 47 (14)
in nineteenth-century Scottish
correspondence: Formality, familiarity and
religious discourse
Marina Dossena
Communities of practice, idiolects, and 61 (22)
community grammar: Variation in the past
tense be paradigms in the Civil War letters
from Northwestern South Carolina
Radoslaw Dylewski
Community or communities of practice? 1820 83 (22)
petitioners in the Cape Colony
Matylda Wlodarczyk
Part II. Scribes and printers
Crafting text languages: Spelling systems in 105(18)
manuscripts of the "Man of Law's Tale" as a
means of construing scribal community of
practice
Justyna Rogos
Typographical and graphomorphemic features of 123(28)
five editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes
as elements of the early printers' community
of practice
Hanna Rutkowska
Printing houses as communities of practice: 151(26)
Orthography in early modern medical books
Jukka Tyrkk?
Elizabeth Montagu's Shakespeare essay (1769): 177(24)
The final draft and the first edition as
evidence of two communities of practice
Anni Sairio
Part III. Professionals
Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: 201(24)
Bilingual communities of practice in
Anglo-Saxon England
Olga Timofeeva
How a community of practice creates a text 225(26)
community: Middle Scots legal and
administrative discourse
Joanna Kopaczyk
"These two, Physitians and Chirurgeons, are 251(18)
to be intimate friends together": Early
Modern English community of medical
practitioners
Anna Hebda
Malgorzata Fabiszak
The formation of the Royal Society as a 269(18)
community of practice and discourse
Maurizio Gotti
Index of names 287(2)
Index of subjects 289
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