This volume explores the dynamics of genre conventions in historical English news discourse. The contributions cover a wide spectrum of news writing and publication formats: from corantos to modern tabloids, from prototypical hard news stories and crime reports to more specialised genres such as medical and scientific news, advertisements, death notices and spoof news. Investigating linguistic, pragmatic and social factors, the authors trace the triggers, mechanisms and agents of change that have shaped genre conventions in historical news discourse from the 17th century to the present day.
1. Preface; 2. Introduction (by Bos, Birte); 3. The formation of public news discourse and metadiscursive terminology; 4. "We have in some former bookes told you": The significance of metatext in 17th-century news (by Brownlees, Nicholas); 5. Conceptualisations, sources and agents of news: Key terms as signposts of changing journalistic practices (by Bos, Birte); 6. Changing modes of reference and shifts in audience orientation; 7. News in space and time (by Claridge, Claudia); 8. Changing genre conventions and socio-cultural change: Person-mention in 19th-century English advertisements (by Palander-Collin, Minna); 9. Late Modern English death notices: Transformations of a traditional lay audiences (by Borde, Sarah); 10. Medical news in England 1665-1800 in journals for professional and lay audiences (by Taavitsainen, Irma); 11. Transgressing boundaries and shifting styles; 12. Comparing discourse construction in 17th-century news genres: A case study of murder reports (by Cecconi, Elisabetta); 13. Speech-like syntax in written texts: Changing syntactic conventions in news discourse (by Haselow, Alexander); 14. Playing upon news genre conventions: The case of Mark Twain's news satire (by Ermida, Isabel); 15. Index
