Language in history

In Language in History, Tony Crowley provides the analytical tools for answering such questions as: What are the relations between language and class? How has language been used to construct nationality? Using a radical re-reading of Saussure and Bakhtin, he demonstrates, in four case studies, the ways in which language has been used to construct social and cultural identity in Britain and Ireland. Examples include the ways in which language was employed to construct a bourgeois public sphere in eighteenth-century England, and the manner in which language is still being used in contemporary Ireland to articulate national and political aspirations. By bringing together linguistic and critical theory with historical and political consciousness, Tony Crowley provides a new agenda for the study of language in history. In particular he draws attention to the fact that this field has always been firmly rooted in a deeply political context. And he demonstrates how that context has directed the study of language in history. Language in History represents a major contribution to the field and is an essential text for anyone interested in critical and cultural theory; it also provides an important contextualisation of many debates which have influenced literary studies.