Embracing the written word

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 1988

Approaches to the History of Written Culture

This book has aimed to show the importance of writing in different historical and geographical contexts. Writing has been examined as a communications medium, an instrument of power (but at the same time of subversion), a source of esoteric knowledge, a means of self-expression and an educational instrument. The purposes of writing have constantly evolved and it has been adapted for various ends by different social, political and religious groups. We have argued that, to fully understand its meanings, we must borrow techniques of archaeology and anthropology. The cultural historian of writing needs an ethnographic perspective. One common thread running through the chapters has been the close attention paid to the materiality of writing in the hands of different social actors, whether they are elites, powerful institutions or modest individual peasants. The techniques, instruments and physical support for writing have both limited its possibilities and opened up new opportunities for the wider diffusion of texts. The availability of clay in Mesopotamia, the gradual substitution of paper for parchment in Europe, as well as the era

Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 2007

This article gives a detailed description and discussion of seven applications for poor relief, as found in the archives of English County Record Offices. All letters were written by or for poor writers between 1795 and 1834. As the variety used in these letters is not 'Standard', nor 'dialect', the second part of the article is devoted to the question of how this variety relates (or does not) to traditional linguistic views on standardisation. Contrary to the prevailing 'standard language ideology', it will be claimed that the present letters can only be interpreted adequately through a linguistic theory 'which treats all varieties of English equally and discards none'. … in writing the history of powerless people, drawing on conventional, published sources is far from enough.

Culture & History Digital Journal

This article reviews some new directions in the history of writing practices, concentrating on Western Europe and the Americas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I identify some major intellectual influences on the field, deriving from historiography, anthropology and literary studies. I indicate some important archives specialising in popular writings which sustain the study of the writings of ordinary and semi-literate people. A few selected topics in which the history of writing practices makes a contribution are then briefly reviewed. These are, firstly, the history of correspondence and letter-writing instruction manuals, which introduces two important concepts: the 'epistolary pact' and 'epistolary literacy'. Secondly, I introduce three new works on the development of postal services, stressing their role in forging national cohesion. Thirdly, I indicate how the study of emigrants' writings has contributed to a shift of focus in the study of emigration in general. I conclude that the history of scribal culture can make a significant contribution to socio-cultural history, provided that writing is analysed in its material form, and as a text, not simply as a source of information. Writing practices deserve serious study as a social and cultural phenomenon in their own right.

The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, 1999

Even though the majority of sources concerning the onset of literacy in Wales and England (see Briggs 2010; Brown 2003, 2006; Colman 1992; Davies 1999; Edwards 2007; Elliot 1957; Fell 1994; Looijenga 2003; Lord 2003; McManus 1991; Opland 1980; Page 1973; Parsons 1999; Redknap, Lewis 2007; Sims-Williams [1998] 2006, [2003] 2004) stipulate the significance of early writing systems, it may be argued that these stages of cultural development were overshadowed by Latin influences at some point in history. Contemporary theories concerning the origins of writing (see Schmandt-Besserat [1992] 2006, 2007) and oral patterns of thinking (see Ong [1982] 2002; Luria [1974] 1976; Goody 1968, 1994) suggest that there exists an elaborate manner of evolution of cultural practices among the representatives of oral societies seeking to adopt the technology of writing as one of the methods of collecting and storing valuable information. In terms of post-Roman Britain it can be observed that the two most vivid examples of such practices are runic and ogham scripts. In order to gauge the scale and character of cultural processes which led to the adoption of runic and ogham scripts, and eventually, their being supplanted by the Latin alphabet in the British Isles, one should take a closer look at the earliest inscriptions found in Wales and England. This study presents an overview of my doctoral research, which incorporated a text corpus consisting of 23 Latin and ogham inscriptions from the counties of Breconshire and Glamorgan, as well as ten runic inscriptions from England. A closer study of geographical, linguistic and cultural factors, set within the framework of text linguistics demonstrated that the pre-literate period of British history witnessed a degree of cultural and linguistic richness and diversity.

Rethinking History, 2014

Language in Society, 1990

Gallia, 2004

Discoveries of writing tablets from Roman Britain, in particular of the Vindolanda writing tablets, have revolutionized analysis of the use of documents among individual communities in the province. The insights gained from the study of the texts may be developed by further study of the archaeological contexts in which writing tablets have been found. The bias in the distribution to military sites and London is not surprising, since higher levels of literacy might be anticipated. However the distribution also suggests a wider use of documents in rural contexts than has hitherto been proposed. Detailed analysis of depositional processes also promises to assist the interpretation of individual groups of documents and the investigation of the organization of archives, but significant obstacles to such analyses must be acknowledged. Mots-clés. Tablettes à écrire, Bretagne romaine, Vindolanda, Carlisle, Londres, contexte archéologique. Résumé. La découverte des tablettes à écrire dans des sites britto-romains, surtout à Vindolanda, a révolutionné l'étude de l'utilisation de l'écrit dans les diverses communautés de la province. Les premières observations tirées de l'étude des textes peuvent être approfondies par l'analyse des contextes archéologiques où l'on a trouvé des tablettes. La prédominance, dans leur distribution, des sites militaires et de Londres n'est pas surprenante, du fait que l'on s'attend à un niveau d'alphabétisation plus élevé dans ces contextes. Cependant la répartition indique aussi un emploi de l'écrit en contexte rural, et cela de façon plus intense qu'on ne le supposait jusqu'ici. L'analyse minutieuse des processus de stratification paraît pouvoir aider à l'interprétation des différents groupes de documents écrits, ainsi qu 'à l'étude de l'organisation des archives, mais on doit reconnaître aussi l'existence d'obstacles importants à ce genre d'analyses. Schlagwôrter. Schreibtàfelchen, rômisches Britannien, Vindolanda, Carlisle, London, archàologischer Kontext. Zusammenfassung. Die Entdeckung von Schreibtàfelchen an rômischen Fundstellen in Britannien (besonders in Vindolanda) hat die Erforschung des Schriftgebrauchs in den verschiedenen Bereichen dieser Provinz regelrecht revolutioniert. Die aus der Untersuchung der Texte gewonnenen ersten Beobachtungen lassen sich durch eine Analyse des archàologischen Kontexts vertiefen, aus dem die Funde stammen. Es ist nicht verwunderlich, dafi sie hauptsàchlich an Militàrplàtzen und in London verbreitet sind, denn an diesen Orten ist von einer stàrkeren Alphabetisierung auszugehen. Allerdings belegt ihre weitere Verbreitung auch Schriftgebrauch im làndlichen Bereich, und zwar deutlicher als man dies bisher vermutet hat. Eine detaillierte Untersuchung zur Feinchronologie dûrftefiïr die Interpretation der verschiedenenen Gruppen von Schriftdokumenten und fur das Verstândnis der Organisation der Archive hilfreich sein. Man mufi sich aber auch ûber grofie Hindernisse im Klaren sein, die einer solchenVorgehensweise im Wege stehen. Ùbersetzung : Stefan WlRTH The excavation of large numbers of wooden writing tablets at Vindolanda has changed radically our view of literacy and the use of documents in Roman Britain and beyond. Their discovery, as well as that of assemblages of lead 'curse tablets', have made Britannia the most prolific source of Latin documents in the western empire. The Vindolanda tablets have obliged us to acknowledge the importance of the ink writing tablet, previously a historical footnote, as a documentary medium and have allowed the detailed investigation of the habits of literacy in a single military community. Approaches to the Vindolanda tablets and to other documents have however been predominantly text-oriented. It is the argument of this article that we may gain further insights into both the literacy of the province and the interpretation of individual groups of texts from the study of the archaeological context in which wooden tablets and analogous documents have been found. Archaeological context is increasingly valued in the study of groups of documents (Bagnall, 1995, p. 52), but the nature and scope of its potential contribution remain somewhat unclear. After outlining the current characterization of literacy in Roman Britain, the article therefore discusses the general potential of this form of evidence, as well as the associated problems, drawing illustrations from other parts of the Roman world. The evidence from Roman Britain is then reexamined