1. On interaction in herbals from Middle English to Early Modern English
- Author
-
Martti Mäkinen
- Subjects
060201 languages & linguistics ,Literature ,Linguistics and Language ,History ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,06 humanities and the arts ,Language and Linguistics ,language.human_language ,Linguistics ,Focus (linguistics) ,Middle English ,0602 languages and literature ,050501 criminology ,language ,Middle Ages ,business ,Period (music) ,0505 law ,Early Modern English - Abstract
The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. This study shows that the strategies employed in the Middle English period are very different from the strategies in the Early Modern English period: the use of second-person pronouns and imperatives prevails in the Middle English period, whereas the use of first-person pronouns was preferred in the Early Modern English period. In addition to this, another division, irrespective of the time of writing, is observed in the material: the first group includes handbooks and practical herbals, and the other group learned and empirical herbals. Factors which explain these differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.
- Published
- 2002
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