Historians as recounters: description across genres

The basically narrative nature of history is widely recognized and temporal notions are often focused on in the applied linguistics literature on historical discourse (Coffin 2006). Setting the scene for the narrative, however, is often equally important. How do historians represent the places where the action takes place? How are these represented in popularising discourse? The paper aims at providing an overview of variation across specialist and non-specialist genres in the discourse of history. The functions of descriptive elements are explored in two corpora: a corpus of academic journal articles and a corpus of popularisations (from History today). The methodology adopted combines a corpus and a discourse perspective (Baker 2006) while focusing on the lexis of space representation (Gerbig 2008). Analytical tools from studies of description (Merlini Barbaresi 2009) suggest focusing on the construction of visual elements and subjectivity- selective elements, verbs of movement/ perception, markers of viewer’s perspective and position. These are seen to play a role in textual interaction and in narrative structures (especially in creating the setting and relating it to the theme). Corpus tools used are keywords (Wordsmith Tools 5) and concordance analysis of selected items (the co-text of the nodes is analyzed with a view to their textual patterns, so as to bring out the semantic and pragmatic implications of many organizational units) A preliminary analysis of frequency data offers an overview of quantitative variation. Special attention is paid to existential "there" as an Attention-managing device (Ehlich 2007), drawing attention to elements in the 'space' of the world of the story ("there was hardly any street") and places in the text/discourse ("there are important differences"). In the narrative, existential "there" contributes to a) Presenting actors/processes (characterizing individuals in the 'story') b) Interpreting events (mostly followed by abstract nouns - "there was a spectacular shift", "a rigid division", "a steady growth" - and often negative, measured against unstated expectations: "little attempt", "no conclusive evidence", "no institutional distinction") The representation of places is shown to contribute to creating the setting and stages in the narrative, highlighting the significance of the data and the conclusions produced, leading the reader’s gaze from exemplification to generalization and mapping the territory of current debate with different degrees of explicitness. Existential patterns and deictics play important textual functions in descriptions, as resources by which the author negotiates his/her position with the reader according to genre-specific orientations: present-day relevance in popularizations, the line of argument in journal articles.