Affiliation:
1. University of Helsinki
Abstract
Abstract
This article traces medical book reviews up to 1800 in the first scientific periodical, The Philosophical
Transactions (pt 1665–), and the first general magazine, The Gentleman’s Magazine
(gm 1665–1922), within the frame of genre theory, focusing on polite and impolite speech acts. pt readers
formed a close network of Royal Society members, while gm attracted a large and more heterogeneous readership. The method
employed is qualitative discourse analysis in its sociohistorical context.
Two different lines of development emerge. The first issue of pt contains a book review that set a model
genre script by surveying the contents and providing a concise positive evaluation at the end. gm published few book
reviews at first but their number increased towards 1800. pt keeps to the positive end of evaluation with discreet
criticism, while gm speech acts range from praising compliments to aggressive insults. The former trend goes back to book
advertisements and the latter to scientific disputes; but in general, polite society conventions prevail in both publications.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
1 articles.
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