We are seeking applicants for a PhD scholarship in the framework of the research project ‘Polite speaking through conduct books, published in Catalonia (1800-1936)’ funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. The scholarship is for a maximum of four years. The remuneration will be €24,468.27 gross per annum.
Interested parties should contact Prof. Jenny Brumme, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
jenny.brumme [at] upf.edu
The project aims to contribute to the history of linguistic interaction in Spanish and Catalan by analysing a corpus of conduct books published in Catalonia between 1800 and 1936. The 19th century saw the rise of this discursive genre as a consequence of the social changes that Spanish society underwent, which is why these works are considered a very rich source for the history and historiography of the Spanish and Catalan language.
The project is situated within the framework of historical pragmatics, an internationally recognised sub-discipline with great potential for the study of the Spanish and Catalan language. Within this framework, the analysis of the corpus of more than 90 conduct books, which reflect what was considered polite interaction, will focus on classifying the speech acts depicted in the works, describing conversational norms, analysing attenuation strategies and reconstructing the forms of address used at the time. As a complement to the pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic analysis of the corpus, aspects related to the history of the translations (specifically in the Catalan editions), the differences between the editions of the same manual and the contributions to gender studies will also be taken into account, since the manuals reflect the role and behaviour expected of girls and women in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally, given the characteristics of this relatively stereotypical genre, the second major objective of the project focuses on the analysis of the vocabulary used to present the concepts of polite behaviour (urbanidad, cortesía, cortesanía, civilidad, buena crianza, buena educación, buenos modales, buen tono, etc.).