Discourse Perspectives on Early English
The Department project Discourse Perspectives on Early English, funded by the Academy of Finland from 1999 to 2005, brought together the history of English and the study of discourse, text and pragmatics. The seven scholars associated with the project continue to work on their individual topics in the field of discourse linguistics, incorporating both historical discourse studies and historical pragmatics. Their shared objective is to account for some of the characteristics of English discourse from Old to Early Modern English, with special reference to the interplay of language and context. By context we refer to both linguistic and non-linguistic situational factors, i.e. the text-internal linguistic context and the text-external social, material and geographical context.
The members of the team are Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen, Matti Peikola, Janne Skaffari, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen and Ellen Valle, and Minna Scheinin (Turku Polytechnic) and Brita Wårvik (Åbo Akademi University).
A number of publications related to the themes of the project have been published by the research team in the last few years, including a collection of papers originally presented at the international Organization in Discourse II: The Historical Perspective conference hosted by the project in 2002:
Carroll, Ruth & Janne Skaffari. 2002. Historical Perspectives on Text, Discourse and Pragmatics. The European English Messenger. XI (2), 48-52.
Hiltunen, Risto & Janne Skaffari (eds.). 2003. Discourse Perspectives on English: Medieval to Modern (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 119). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [Chapters by the project team and a collaborative introduction to the field of historical discourse linguistics. More information.]
Peikola, Matti. 2000. Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-Fashioning in English Lollard Writings (Anglicana Turkuensia, 21). Turku: Department of English, University of Turku.
Skaffari, Janne, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen & Brita Wårvik (eds.). 2005. Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 134). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [A selection of papers from the OID II conference, including contributions by Laurel J. Brinton, Andreas H. Jucker, Françoise Salager-Meyer, Irma Taavitsainen, Barbara Wehr and Laura Wright. More information.]
Wårvik, Brita. 2002. On Grounding in Narrative: A Survey of Models and Criteria (English Department Publications, 5). Turku: Åbo Akademi University.