Open-Access-Bücher zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft

In der let­zten Zeit sind u.a. diese frei ver­füg­baren Titel erschienen:

The emergence of American English as a discursive variety: Tracing enregisterment processes in nineteenth-century U.S. newspapers

Ingrid Paulsen  
https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/341 & https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6207627

Do speak­ers’ iden­ti­ty con­struc­tions influ­ence the emer­gence of new vari­eties of a lan­guage? This ques­tion is at the heart of a debate about how the process of the emer­gence of post­colo­nial vari­eties of Eng­lish can best be mod­eled. This vol­ume con­tributes to the debate by link­ing it to mod­els and the­o­ries pro­posed by anthro­po­log­i­cal lin­guists, soci­olin­guists and dis­course lin­guists who view iden­ti­ty as a social and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that is pro­duced through lin­guis­tic and oth­er social prac­tices. Lan­guage is seen as essen­tial for iden­ti­ty con­struc­tions because speak­ers use lin­guis­tic forms that index social ‘per­son­ae’ as well as spe­cif­ic social prac­tices and val­ues to con­vey an image of self to oth­er speak­ers.

Based on the the­o­ry of enreg­is­ter­ment that mod­els the cul­tur­al and dis­cur­sive process of the cre­ation of index­i­cal links between lin­guis­tic forms and social val­ues, the argu­ment is made that any mod­el of the emer­gence of new vari­eties needs to dif­fer­en­ti­ate care­ful­ly between a struc­tur­al lev­el and a dis­cur­sive lev­el. What emerges on the dis­cur­sive lev­el as a result of process­es of enreg­is­ter­ment is a ‘dis­cur­sive vari­ety’. The vol­ume illus­trates how the emer­gence of a dis­cur­sive vari­ety can be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly stud­ied in a his­tor­i­cal con­text by focus­ing on the enreg­is­ter­ment of Amer­i­can Eng­lish as it can be observed in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry U.S. news­pa­pers. Using a dis­course-lin­guis­tic method­olog­i­cal frame­work and two large data­bas­es con­tain­ing close to 78 mil­lion news­pa­per arti­cles, the study reveals a com­plex pat­tern of index­i­cal links between the phono­log­i­cal forms /h/-drop­ping and ‑inser­tion, yod-drop­ping, a length­ened and back­ened bath vow­el, non-rhotic­i­ty, a real­iza­tion of pre­vo­cal­ic /r/ as a labio­den­tal approx­i­mant as well as the lex­i­cal items bag­gage and pants on the one hand and social val­ues cen­ter­ing around nation­al­i­ty, authen­tic­i­ty and non-speci­fici­ty on the oth­er hand. Qual­i­ta­tive analy­ses uncov­er the social per­son­ae asso­ci­at­ed with the lin­guis­tic forms (e.g. the Amer­i­can cow­boy, the African Amer­i­can mam­my and the ‘Anglo-mani­ac’ Amer­i­can dude), while quan­ti­ta­tive analy­ses trace the devel­op­ment over time and show that the enreg­is­ter­ment process­es were wide­spread and not restrict­ed to a par­tic­u­lar region.

A history of English

Míša Hejná & George Walk­den
https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/346 & https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6560337

Where does today’s Eng­lish lan­guage come from? This book takes its read­ers on a jour­ney back in time, from present-day vari­eties to the Old Eng­lish of Beowulf and beyond. Writ­ten for stu­dents with lit­tle or no back­ground in lin­guis­tics, and reflect­ing the lat­est schol­ar­ship, it show­cas­es the vari­a­tion and change present through­out the his­to­ry of Eng­lish, and includes numer­ous exer­cis­es and sam­ple texts for every peri­od.

The reverse-chrono­log­i­cal approach tak­en by this book sets it apart from all exist­ing text­books of the last fifty years. Inno­v­a­tive fea­tures also include its focus on vari­a­tion, mul­ti­lin­gual­ism and lan­guage con­tact, its use of texts from out­side the lit­er­ary canon, and its inclu­sion of case stud­ies from syn­tax, socio­pho­net­ics and his­tor­i­cal prag­mat­ics.

A Short Media History of English Literature

Ingo Berens­mey­er | https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110784459

This book explores the his­to­ry of lit­er­a­ture as a his­to­ry of chang­ing media and modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, from man­u­script to print, from the codex to the com­put­er, and from paper to dig­i­tal plat­forms. It argues that lit­er­a­ture has evolved, and con­tin­ues to evolve, in sync with mate­r­i­al forms and for­mats that engage our sens­es in mul­ti­ple ways. Because lit­er­ary expe­ri­ences are embed­ded in, and enabled by, media, the book focus­es on lit­er­a­ture as a chang­ing com­bi­na­tion of mate­r­i­al and imma­te­r­i­al fea­tures.

The prin­ci­pal agents of this his­to­ry are no longer gen­res, authors, and texts but con­fig­u­ra­tions of media and tech­nolo­gies. In telling the sto­ry of these com­bi­na­tions from pre­his­to­ry to the present, Ingo Berens­mey­er dis­tin­guish­es between three suc­ces­sive dom­i­nants of media usage that have shaped lit­er­ary his­to­ry: per­for­mance, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and con­nec­tion. Using Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture as a test case for a long view of media his­to­ry, this book com­bines an unusu­al bird’s eye view across peri­ods with illu­mi­nat­ing read­ings of key texts. It will prove an invalu­able resource for teach­ing and for inde­pen­dent study in Eng­lish or com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture and media stud­ies.