Re/reading the past
Critical and functional perspectives on time and value
Published on 17. November 2003
Book
Hardback
277 pages
978-90-272-2698-3 (ISBN)
Description
Re/reading the Past is concerned with the discourses of history, from the complementary perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The papers in the book stress the discursive construction of the past, focussing on the different social narratives which compete for official acknowledgement. Issues of collective and cultural memory are addressed, reflecting the "linguistic turn" in the Social Sciences. The book covers a range of discourses, interpreting texts from popular culture to academic discourse including the construction and evaluation of past events in a variety of places around the world. It is especially timely in its focus on the construction of time and value in a post-colonial world where history discourses are central to on-going processes of reconciliation, debates on war crimes, and the issues of amnesty and restitution. As such the book fills a significant gap in interdisciplinary debates as well as in register and genre analysis, and will be of general interest to historians, political scientists and discourse analysts as well as students and teachers of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes).
Reviews / Votes
This volume provides multiple models of approaching historical discourse from a critical perspective, enabling the comparison and evaluation of different approaches to data and frameworks for analysis, as well as encouraging dialogue between CDA and SFL. It is a valuable resource for understanding how texts and contexts interact in the construction of evaluation and interpretation in history. -- Mary J. Schleppegrell, University of California, Davis, USA, in Discourse Studies Vol. 7:3 (2005)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 154 mm
Weight
520 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-2698-3 (9789027226983)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2003
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€136.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. Introduction (by Martin, J.R.); 2. I. Constructing time and value: Semiotic resources; 3. Making history: Grammar for interpretation (by Martin, J.R.); 4. II. Recent past: Telling stories; 5. News as history: Your daily gossip (by White, Peter R.R.); 6. Challenging media censoring: Writing between the lines in the face of stringent restrictions (by Anthonissen, Christine); 7. III. Distant past: Making history; 8. The discursive construction of individual memories: How Austrian "Wehrmacht" soldiers remember WWII (by Benke, Gertraud); 9. The languages of the past: On the re-construction of a collective history through individual stories (by Menz, Florian); 10. Orthopraxy, writing and identity: Shaping lives through borrowed genres in Congo (by Blommaert, Jan); 11. History as discourse; discourse as history: "The rise of modern China" - A history exhibition in post-colonial Hong Kong (by Flowerdew, John); 12. IV. Yesteryear: Instilling memories; 13. Reconstruals of the past - settlement or invasion?: The role of JUDGEMENT analysis (by Coffin, Caroline); 14. Pearl Harbor in Japanese high school history textbooks: The grammar and semantics of responsibility (by Barnard, Christopher); 15. Index