Irma Taavitsainen
Biographic Data
| ID | 531084 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Irma Taavitsainen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Irma |
| FAMILY NAME | Taavitsainen |
| SIGNATURE | TAAVITSAINEN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9032-5930 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 8 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Historical Pragmatics
The core definition of historical pragmatics (HP hereafter) emphasizes negotiation of contextual meaning in communication in historical texts. In addition, there are several other definitions that highlight other sides of this versatile field of study with subfields, for example, processes of language change are central to diachronic pragmatics while historical sociopragmatics focuses more on social embedding of interaction. Below, an overview of…
Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820
Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this book offers novel perspectives on the history of medical writing and scientific thought-styles by examining patterns of change and reception in genres, discourse, and lexis in the period 1500-1820. Each chapter demonstrates in detail how changing textual forms were closely tied to major multi-faceted social developments: industrialisation, urbanisation, expanding trade, colonialization, and c…
Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500-1820
Walter Bailey’s (1529–1593) Medical Genres
This chapter provides a detailed assessment of Walter Bailey’s medical genres in the vernacular and how they reflect changing thought styles from scholasticism to empiricism. The ongoing process is demonstrated by first-hand evidence obtained by analysing both macrolevel structural compositions of genres and various text types within them. Language change is located on the discourse level by identifying stylistic varieties, showing the mechanism …
Contrastive Pragmatics in a Diachronic Perspective
The paper provides an overview of the interface of contrastive and historical pragmatics and a case study of Othello’s monologue. The emerging lines of development at the cross-roads of contrastive and historical pragmatics cover, in particular, speech acts, forms of discursive behaviour and stance. In the analysis, German, Swedish, Finnish and Polish translations from different periods are compared to show differences in the above-mentioned feat…
Meaning-making practices in the history of medical English
Genres work through conventions of communicative patterns. Variation in them is related to sociolinguistic parameters of writers and readers as well as situational and contextual factors, including culture. Conventions of writing change slowly and there are elements that remain constant throughout centuries but acquire new connotations. I shall first discuss genre theories and methods of studies at the interface between language and literature, a…
Twenty years of historical pragmatics
This paper provides an outline of the changes in linguistics that gave rise to historical pragmatics in the 1990s and that have shaped its development over the twenty years of its existence. These changes have affected virtually all aspects of linguistic analyses: the nature of the data, the research questions, the methods and tools that are being used for the analysis, as well as the nature of the generalizations and findings that result from th…
Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics
Diachronic corpus pragmatics extends the pragmatic perspective to developments in the history of various languages and uses corpus-linguistic methods to trace them. The chapters in this volume focus on linguistic elements at several levels, from individual words to phrases, clauses and entire genres and discourse forms. Using the most recent corpus tools, the authors investigate correlations between forms, functions and contexts in diachronic cas…
Placing Middle English in Context
Historical Pragmatics
The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each con…
Speech acts in the history of English
Methods in Historical Pragmatics
From global language use to local meanings
In 2002, Tom McArthur, then editor of English Today , visited Helsinki and asked Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta whether the use of English in Finland was becoming more like its Nordic neighbours. In an article in ET76 they answered with a cautious ‘yes’. Now the authors provide us with an update, with examples of how English is currently used in Finnish public communication
Methods in Historical Pragmatics (Topics in English Linguistics 52) (Topics in English Linguistics)
English in Finland
THIS ARTICLE discusses present trends in the use of English in Finland, paying attention to the specific sociohistorical character of the country with its long history of Finnish-Swedish bilingualism. It has been argued that the other Nordic countries are developing from EFL to ESL countries; is Finland heading the same way? If so, at what stage is the process? We shall first give a brief overview of the theoretical background and of the historic…
Diachronic perspectives on address term systems
Middle English recipes
This article focuses on Middle English medical recipes and aims to show that the concepts of “genre”, “text type” and “text tradition” provide useful tools for historical discourse analysis, as they operate in different ways and illustrate various sides of medieval texts. Medical recipes are a well-defined procedural genre included in a variety of contexts: they form the major contents of remedybooks, but they are also found within the learned tr…
Diachronic speech act analysis
In this paper we want to develop a model for the diachronic analysis of speech acts by tracing one particular speech act through the history of English, viz. insults. Speech acts are fuzzy concepts which show both diachronic and synchronic variation. We therefore propose a notion of a multidimensional pragmatic space in which speech acts can be analyzed in relation to neighboring speech acts. Against this background we discuss both the changing c…
Dialogues in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Medical Writing
L'A. examine les ecrits scientifiques medicaux en anglais et tente de decrire leur evolution entre 1375 et 1750. Il montre qu'il existe deux traditions principales, la tradition scolastique sous forme de questions-reponses jusqu'a la fin du moyen-âge, et la tradition mimetique refletant les structures naturelles de la conversation dans les manuels a partir du 16 e siecle
Walton's Boethius
(1999). Walton's Boethius: From manuscript to print. English Studies: Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 398-407
Vernacularisation of Medical Writing in English
This article proposes a model for linguistic analysis of scientific thought-styles, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses in the variationist frame and focusing on writings of the scholastic period. The first part of the article considers factors that led to the vernacularisation of scientific writings in fifteenth-century England and the sources, underlying traditions and audiences of these writings. The empirical part focuses on two f…
History of Englishes
Diachronic speech act analysis
In this paper we want to develop a model for the diachronic analysis of speech acts by tracing one particular speech act through the history of English, viz. insults. Speech acts are fuzzy concepts which show both diachronic and synchronic variation. We therefore propose a notion of a multidimensional pragmatic space in which speech acts can be analyzed in relation to neighboring speech acts. Against this background we discuss both the changing c…
Twenty years of historical pragmatics
This paper provides an outline of the changes in linguistics that gave rise to historical pragmatics in the 1990s and that have shaped its development over the twenty years of its existence. These changes have affected virtually all aspects of linguistic analyses: the nature of the data, the research questions, the methods and tools that are being used for the analysis, as well as the nature of the generalizations and findings that result from th…
Middle English recipes
This article focuses on Middle English medical recipes and aims to show that the concepts of “genre”, “text type” and “text tradition” provide useful tools for historical discourse analysis, as they operate in different ways and illustrate various sides of medieval texts. Medical recipes are a well-defined procedural genre included in a variety of contexts: they form the major contents of remedybooks, but they are also found within the learned tr…
Vernacularisation of Medical Writing in English
This article proposes a model for linguistic analysis of scientific thought-styles, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses in the variationist frame and focusing on writings of the scholastic period. The first part of the article considers factors that led to the vernacularisation of scientific writings in fifteenth-century England and the sources, underlying traditions and audiences of these writings. The empirical part focuses on two f…
History of Englishes
Vernacularisation of Medical Writing in English
This article proposes a model for linguistic analysis of scientific thought-styles, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses in the variationist frame and focusing on writings of the scholastic period. The first part of the article considers factors that led to the vernacularisation of scientific writings in fifteenth-century England and the sources, underlying traditions and audiences of these writings. The empirical part focuses on two f…
Dialogues in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Medical Writing
L'A. examine les ecrits scientifiques medicaux en anglais et tente de decrire leur evolution entre 1375 et 1750. Il montre qu'il existe deux traditions principales, la tradition scolastique sous forme de questions-reponses jusqu'a la fin du moyen-âge, et la tradition mimetique refletant les structures naturelles de la conversation dans les manuels a partir du 16 e siecle
Walton's Boethius
(1999). Walton's Boethius: From manuscript to print. English Studies: Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 398-407
Diachronic speech act analysis
In this paper we want to develop a model for the diachronic analysis of speech acts by tracing one particular speech act through the history of English, viz. insults. Speech acts are fuzzy concepts which show both diachronic and synchronic variation. We therefore propose a notion of a multidimensional pragmatic space in which speech acts can be analyzed in relation to neighboring speech acts. Against this background we discuss both the changing c…
Middle English recipes
This article focuses on Middle English medical recipes and aims to show that the concepts of “genre”, “text type” and “text tradition” provide useful tools for historical discourse analysis, as they operate in different ways and illustrate various sides of medieval texts. Medical recipes are a well-defined procedural genre included in a variety of contexts: they form the major contents of remedybooks, but they are also found within the learned tr…
Diachronic perspectives on address term systems
English in Finland
THIS ARTICLE discusses present trends in the use of English in Finland, paying attention to the specific sociohistorical character of the country with its long history of Finnish-Swedish bilingualism. It has been argued that the other Nordic countries are developing from EFL to ESL countries; is Finland heading the same way? If so, at what stage is the process? We shall first give a brief overview of the theoretical background and of the historic…
Methods in Historical Pragmatics (Topics in English Linguistics 52) (Topics in English Linguistics)
Speech acts in the history of English
Methods in Historical Pragmatics
From global language use to local meanings
In 2002, Tom McArthur, then editor of English Today , visited Helsinki and asked Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta whether the use of English in Finland was becoming more like its Nordic neighbours. In an article in ET76 they answered with a cautious ‘yes’. Now the authors provide us with an update, with examples of how English is currently used in Finnish public communication
Historical Pragmatics
The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each con…
Placing Middle English in Context
Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics
Diachronic corpus pragmatics extends the pragmatic perspective to developments in the history of various languages and uses corpus-linguistic methods to trace them. The chapters in this volume focus on linguistic elements at several levels, from individual words to phrases, clauses and entire genres and discourse forms. Using the most recent corpus tools, the authors investigate correlations between forms, functions and contexts in diachronic cas…
Twenty years of historical pragmatics
This paper provides an outline of the changes in linguistics that gave rise to historical pragmatics in the 1990s and that have shaped its development over the twenty years of its existence. These changes have affected virtually all aspects of linguistic analyses: the nature of the data, the research questions, the methods and tools that are being used for the analysis, as well as the nature of the generalizations and findings that result from th…
Meaning-making practices in the history of medical English
Genres work through conventions of communicative patterns. Variation in them is related to sociolinguistic parameters of writers and readers as well as situational and contextual factors, including culture. Conventions of writing change slowly and there are elements that remain constant throughout centuries but acquire new connotations. I shall first discuss genre theories and methods of studies at the interface between language and literature, a…
Contrastive Pragmatics in a Diachronic Perspective
The paper provides an overview of the interface of contrastive and historical pragmatics and a case study of Othello’s monologue. The emerging lines of development at the cross-roads of contrastive and historical pragmatics cover, in particular, speech acts, forms of discursive behaviour and stance. In the analysis, German, Swedish, Finnish and Polish translations from different periods are compared to show differences in the above-mentioned feat…
Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820
Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this book offers novel perspectives on the history of medical writing and scientific thought-styles by examining patterns of change and reception in genres, discourse, and lexis in the period 1500-1820. Each chapter demonstrates in detail how changing textual forms were closely tied to major multi-faceted social developments: industrialisation, urbanisation, expanding trade, colonialization, and c…
Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500-1820
Walter Bailey’s (1529–1593) Medical Genres
This chapter provides a detailed assessment of Walter Bailey’s medical genres in the vernacular and how they reflect changing thought styles from scholasticism to empiricism. The ongoing process is demonstrated by first-hand evidence obtained by analysing both macrolevel structural compositions of genres and various text types within them. Language change is located on the discourse level by identifying stylistic varieties, showing the mechanism …
Historical Pragmatics
The core definition of historical pragmatics (HP hereafter) emphasizes negotiation of contextual meaning in communication in historical texts. In addition, there are several other definitions that highlight other sides of this versatile field of study with subfields, for example, processes of language change are central to diachronic pragmatics while historical sociopragmatics focuses more on social embedding of interaction. Below, an overview of…
Linguistics (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · History (12 works) · Art (8 works) · Lexicography and Language Studies (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (6 works) · Pragmatics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works)