Godly vocabulary in Early Modern English religious debate

Smith, J. J. (2020) Godly vocabulary in Early Modern English religious debate. In: Jonsson, E. and Larsson, T. (eds.) Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-Related and Spoken Texts, in Honor of Merja Kyto. Series: Studies in corpus linguistics (97). John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam ; Philadelphia, pp. 96-112. ISBN 9789027207654 (doi: 10.1075/scl.97.07smi)

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Abstract

The English Reformation of the mid-sixteenth century was characterised by a vigorous public discourse of controversy, mediated by the still-novel printing press. On the one side were those – the godly – who favoured reformed religion; on the other were those – generally exiles – who held to increasingly embattled Roman Catholicism. This chapter compares the outputs of two communities of practice – one Protestant, one Catholic – from a key period in the Reformation’s history: the 1560s. It demonstrates how both sides developed distinctive, ideologically-charged lexicons of theology and insult. It also shows how reformers in particular deployed a coded English vocabulary, including words not usually seen as part of the semantic field of religion, to mark their distinctive discourse community.

Item Type:Book Sections
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Smith, Professor Jeremy
Authors: Smith, J. J.
Subjects:D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
P Language and Literature > PE English
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
Publisher:John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN:9789027207654
Published Online:05 October 2020

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