This call for papers invites contributions on historical news discourse from 1500 to 1945 in settings that may bring new insights into the comparative and transnational histories of the domain. The comparative perspective envisages that at least one of the objects of comparison regards English news discourse. Recent research has shown that not only did news, and hence its discourse, develop in parallel in different geographic locations as countless copycat successful periodicals showcase, but it also traversed political, economic, infrastructural and intellectual borderlines.
The texts may relate, for example, to different themes (political, cultural, social, foreign affairs and conflicts, health and medicine, law, fashion, leisure, advertising and sports), genres and formats (from handwritten newsletters to professional journalism). In particular, we invite contributions focusing on the translation and intertextuality of news, as well as contextual factors that shaped the domain beyond national and geographical limits.
Different methodological approaches are welcome, including, for example, discourse and content analysis, historical pragmatics, stylistics, sociolinguistics, corpus-assisted discourse analysis, print culture and its effect on language and writing strategies.
Please send your abstracts to wmatylda@amu.edu.pl