Words and the First World War: Language, Memory, Vocabulary

✍ Scribed by Julian Walker

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 417
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

“The experiences could be understood only as being of such extremity that they stood beyond written words; it was not a failure of language, but a view that, for the individual, language, particularly written words, and the enormity of the experience were not matched.”
First World War expert Julian Walker looks at how the conflict shaped English and its relationship with other languages. He considers language in relation to mediation and authenticity, as well as the limitations and potential of different kinds of verbal communication. Walker also examines:

✦ Table of Contents

Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
ABBREVIATIONS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1 LANGUAGE, DIALECTAND THE NEED TO COMMUNICATE
Slang, dialect and status
The need to communicate
Managing languages
2 LANGUAGE AT THE FRONT
Words: sources and trajectories
Collecting words
Fighting over words
Control and censorship
Avoidance
Wordplay
Humour
Swearing and the documentation of extreme speech
Transcribing the sound of war
Killing, dying, and the destruction of the body
Failure
3 US AND THEM
Race
Naming the enemy
How others speak
Naming our side
Sex and gender
Place
4 THE HOME FRONT
Commerce and war language
DORA and the control of words
Outrage and the enemy within
Women and children
The family
5 OWNING THE LANGUAGE
Class
Our language
6 LETTING GO
Losing the language of war
The sacred and the remembered: places and names
Silence
Post-war study
Then and now
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX