Andrew Newman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643458
- eISBN:
- 9781469643472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643458.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. ...
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The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. Representations of literacy events, or action sequences involving reading and writing, express the captives’ affiliation with their discourse communities, which share literacy practices and language ideologies, including the widespread belief that literacy entails a cultural superiority over native peoples. The analysis distinguishes between conventional textual references, such as allusions, that belong to the author’s discourse, and texts that appear as part of the captive’s story. It presents the concept of the reception allegory, an application of another text to one’s present circumstances, and emphasizes the ethnohistorical context for the captive’s experience, as opposed to the cultural context for the author’s narrative.Less
The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. Representations of literacy events, or action sequences involving reading and writing, express the captives’ affiliation with their discourse communities, which share literacy practices and language ideologies, including the widespread belief that literacy entails a cultural superiority over native peoples. The analysis distinguishes between conventional textual references, such as allusions, that belong to the author’s discourse, and texts that appear as part of the captive’s story. It presents the concept of the reception allegory, an application of another text to one’s present circumstances, and emphasizes the ethnohistorical context for the captive’s experience, as opposed to the cultural context for the author’s narrative.
