Material practices meet sociolinguistics: Letter-writing in seventeenth-century England

Bidragets beskrivning

Letters are physical artefacts, and carry meaning both in their text, and in their material features. This project investigates material practices of letter-writing in 17th-century England by combining archival research on manuscript letters with resources and quantitative methods from historical sociolinguistics. The results reveal a previously invisible source that will benefit all historical studies that use letters. Two kinds of new knowledge are produced: an overview of early modern English epistolary material practices and how they changed over time, and a detailed survey of how practices varied according to their social contexts. These results will function as a 'key' to deciphering the social meaning of material practices in letter-writing, which will be valuable to literary, cultural and social historians as well as historical linguists, and which will enrich our understanding of past societies.
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Startår

2022

Slutår

2025

Beviljade finansiering

Samuli Kaislaniemi Orcid -palvelun logo
238 016 €

Finansiär

Finlands Akademi

Typ av finansiering

Forskardoktorer

Övriga uppgifter

Finansieringsbeslutets nummer

347257

Vetenskapsområden

Språkvetenskaper

Forskningsområden

Kieli, yhteiskunta ja kulttuuri