In the last few years, social historians have discovered what might be called the ?linguistic dimension? of their discipline, just as sociolinguists have been discovering the ?historical dimension? and historians of language the ?social dimension?. They have become interested in language both as a source for social history and also as a historical phenomenon in its own right. This volume of essays brings together some of this recent work by social historians of Britain, France and Italy from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The authors concern themselves with the politics as well as...

Brian Street's volume investigates the meanings and uses of literacy in different cultures and societies. These largely ethnographic essays bring together anthropological and linguistic work written over the past ten years by anthropologists and sociolinguists. Accounts of literacy practices vary from one context to another, and challenge the view that literacy is a single, uniform skill, essential to functioning in a modern society. The conclusions reached will be crucial for future researchers, and of interest to educators, developers and practitioners in the field.

In this book, Elizabeth Tonkin, an anthropologist, uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the construction and interpretation of oral histories. She argues for a deeper understanding of their oral and social characteristics. Oral accounts of past events are guides to the future, as well as being social activities in which tellers claim authority to speak to particular audiences. Like written history and literature, orality has its shaping genres and aesthetic conventions and, likewise, has to be interpreted through them. Tonkin illustrates her argument from a wide range of examples...