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The table below sums up the results of a spontaneous poll among university
teachers of the subject present at the Applying Historical Linguistics
Workshop held at ESSE/4 in Debrecen, Hungary 1997. The stimulus question
was roughly: "What do you think should a European student of English
be taught about the history of the language?". - Fifteen colleagues
handed back response sheets.
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The summary below tries to present the collected responses in an ordered
manner. The division into three main groups (bold caps on orange background)
was established during the analysis and serves the purpose of facilitating
orientation.
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The bold items on light yellow background represent categories mentioned
in the response sheets themselves.
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The bold number after each such category represents the number of times
either the category itself or more specific aspects falling into the category
(italics on white background) were mentioned.
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Since unspecified mentions of categories did also occur, the numbers indicating
how often specific aspects were mentioned do not necessarily add up to
yield the numbers indicating mentions of superordinate categories.
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Where further subcategorizations of specific aspects were necessary, these
appear in normal typeface on light grey background.
In spite of the informal way in which the responses were gathered,
the resulting table appears to represent a nice view of what aspects of
English Historical Linguistics are presently being taught at European universities.
Of course, it is a loose collection of themes at best and should not be
interpreted as canonical in any way. In particular it is so comprehensive
that hardly any real History of English course will be able to cover more
than a fraction of the aspects mentioned in the table, given the severe
limitations of teaching time Historical Linguistics has to cope with within
the normal type of English Studies syllabus. In spite of these shortcomings,
however, the table below might serve as a starting point for discussing
how one might best mould an interesting and valuable History of English
course out of the abundance of interesting matter that offers itself for
teaching.
We shall try to think of good ways of getting such a discussion going.
In the meantime you are invited you to look at and reflect on the list
below, and in case anything comes to your mind that you feel like sharing,
please send us an email. Incoming messages that we consider of general
interest to the community of English Historical Linguists will promptly
be published on this site. Promise.
Olga Fischer &
Niki Ritt
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