Semantics and Cultural Change in the British Enlightenment: New Words and Old

Description

Obsolete old words from seventeenth-century English villages reflect the realities of working-class life, exhausting labor, dirt, bizarre foods, magic, horses, outrageous sexism, feudal duties. New words, first appearing in print 1650–1800, reflect a middle-class culture very different from an earlier courtly culture, interested in money, coffee-houses, and self-fulfillment. The book contains chapters on pre-industrial and middle-class culture, the scientific revolution, and semantic change. They give strong evidence that new words and the new senses of old words played a key role in the British Enlightenment, its links with quantification and natural science, its tendencies towards reorganization and democracy, its redefinitions and revitalizations of women’s roles, social stereotypes, the public sphere, and the very concepts of individualism, sociability, and civilization itself.  Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. First Thoughts 2. Very Often, We Do Things with Words 3. A Preview of Six Chapters 4. Words and History Chapter 1. Old Words 1. Rural Life 2. A Village Doles Out Punishments 3. Cooking and Eating 4. Remnants of Feudalism 5. Hunting 6. Proverbs 7. Magic Chapter 2. New Words and the Middle Class 1. New Words and Cultural Change 2. The Invention of Comfort 3. A 'Conversable World' Chapter 3. The Enlightenment 1. Orderliness, Organization, and Modernity 2. A Gradual Spread of Democratic Values 3. Weights and Measures Chapter 4. Science and the English Language 1. The Royal Society 2. Artificial Languages and Prose Style 3. Scientific Words 4. Anna Wierzbicka and Empirical Science Chapter 5. Words, Cultural Change, and History 1. Old Words in Dictionaries 2. Local Words 3. New Words – Party and Fun 4. Language and Culture and History 5. The Politicization of English Chapter 6. New Words in the Enlightenment 1. Individuality and Self-Consciousness 2. Bluestocking 3. 'Public' Words and the Public Sphere 4. Sympathy 5. Commercial 6. Classification 7. Critique and Cosmopolitan 8. Conclusion 'Party' and 'Fun' – Texts More Old Words New Words Works Cited Index