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21 Discourse traditions in the history of French

  • Esme Winter-Froemel and Carlotta Posth
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Abstract

This chapter aims to give an overview of the history of French from the perspective of discourse traditions (DTs). Since DTs have not yet been established as a key concept of French historical linguistics, we first summarise previous research and highlight gaps that indicate promising avenues for future research. Based on these considerations, we then discuss the relevance of DTs for the different periods of French. Following the approach of the Grande Grammaire Historique du Français, we will comment on the periods of Very Old French, Old French, Middle French, Preclassical French, Classical French, Modern French and Contemporary French by presenting DTs that have had an emblematic status for certain periods in the history of French. For the characterisation of the DTs, we integrate the notions of communicative immediacy and distance, the DTs’ medial realisation, the languages and varieties that are relevant to them, and the domains of use in which they are embedded.

Abstract

This chapter aims to give an overview of the history of French from the perspective of discourse traditions (DTs). Since DTs have not yet been established as a key concept of French historical linguistics, we first summarise previous research and highlight gaps that indicate promising avenues for future research. Based on these considerations, we then discuss the relevance of DTs for the different periods of French. Following the approach of the Grande Grammaire Historique du Français, we will comment on the periods of Very Old French, Old French, Middle French, Preclassical French, Classical French, Modern French and Contemporary French by presenting DTs that have had an emblematic status for certain periods in the history of French. For the characterisation of the DTs, we integrate the notions of communicative immediacy and distance, the DTs’ medial realisation, the languages and varieties that are relevant to them, and the domains of use in which they are embedded.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Manuals of Romance Linguistics V
  3. Table of Contents VII
  4. 0 Introduction 1
  5. Part I: The theory and history of discourse traditions and discourse traditional knowledge
  6. 1 Discourse traditions research: foundations, theoretical issues and implications 25
  7. 2 Discourse traditions and variation linguistics 59
  8. 3 Conceptual developments in discourse tradition theory 81
  9. 4 Discourse traditions and the historicity of language: discourse traditional knowledge and discourse universes 103
  10. 5 Discourse traditions in synchrony 123
  11. 6 Discourse traditions and linguistic dynamics 143
  12. 7 International diffusion of the discourse traditions model 183
  13. Part II: Discourse traditions within historical linguistics and textual linguistics: models, concepts, and approaches
  14. 8 Discourse traditions and the construction of discourse from a historical perspective 211
  15. 9 Discourse traditions, linguistic standardisation and elaboration: reflections from Spanish 229
  16. 10 Discourse traditions, text linguistics and historical pragmatics 249
  17. 11 Discourse traditions, functional and cognitive linguistics 267
  18. 12 Discourse traditions and Construction Grammar 283
  19. 13 Discourse traditions, genres, and rhetoric 297
  20. 14 Discourse traditions, text linguistics, and translation studies 317
  21. 15 Discourse traditions and models of discourse segmentation 333
  22. Part III: Discourse traditions in the history of Romance: applications and case studies
  23. 16 Discourse traditions in the early Romance period (with a focus on Gallo-Romance varieties) 353
  24. 17 Discourse traditions in early Italo-Romance varieties 369
  25. 18 Discourse traditions in early Ibero-Romance varieties 385
  26. 19 Romance and Latin in medieval discourse traditions: the elaboration of vernacular writing between inscriptions and in-scripturation 397
  27. 20 Discourse traditions and translation: interference between Latin and Romance in the Early Modern Period (poetry, dialogue, doctrinal prose) 411
  28. 21 Discourse traditions in the history of French 435
  29. 22 Discourse traditions in the history of Italian 467
  30. 23 Discourse traditions in the history of European Spanish 489
  31. 24 Discourse traditions and the history of American Spanish: social settings, contacts, ideologies and challenges 527
  32. 25 Diachronic approaches to discourse traditions in Spanish America 539
  33. 26 Discourse traditions in the history of Brazilian Portuguese: a case study on forms of address 553
  34. 27 Discourse traditions in the history of Romanian 571
  35. 28 Discourse traditions in the history of Catalan: a case study on additive discourse markers 599
  36. 29 Discourse traditions in the history of Romansh 615
  37. 30 Discourse traditions in multilingual contexts: the Kingdom of Naples 633
  38. Part IV: Contacts with further approaches
  39. 31 Discourse traditions and corpus linguistics 647
  40. 32 Discourse traditions and computational linguistics 669
  41. 33 Discourse traditions and lexical innovation 691
  42. 34 Discourse traditions and formulaic language studies 705
  43. 35 Syntactic complexity in Standard Average European: language contact and discourse traditions in the domain of communicative distance 721
  44. 36 Discourse traditions and literary studies: the example of Ancient Greek and Latin literature(s) 739
  45. 37 Interdiscursivity in French theatre: crossing linguistic and literary perspectives 751
  46. 38 Discourse traditions, multimodality and media studies 767
  47. Appendix
  48. Discourse traditions: on their status in language theory and on their dynamics 783
  49. Contributors 821
  50. Index 823
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