Overview

This study is devoted to a corpus of Old Russian letters, written on pieces of birchbark. These unique texts from Novgorod and surroundings give us an exceptional impression of everyday life in medieval Russian society. In this study, the birchbark letters are addressed from a pragmatic angle. Linguistic parameters are identified that shed light on the degree to which literacy had gained ground in communicative processes. It is demonstrated that the birchbark letters occupy an intermediate position between orality and literacy. On the one hand, oral habits of communication persisted, as reflected in how the birchbark letters are phrased; on the other hand, literate modes of expression emerged, as seen in the development of normative conventions and literate formulae.

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Reviews

""Dekkerʼs book is a very welcome contribution to the field of historical pragmatics and an important step towards a comprehensive account of the pragmatics of the Old Russian birchbark letters."" -Imke Mendoza, Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 2019

Dekker's book is a very welcome contribution to the field of historical pragmatics and an important step towards a comprehensive account of the pragmatics of the Old Russian birchbark letters. -Imke Mendoza, Paris-Lodron-Universitat Salzburg in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 2019

"""Dekkerʼs book is a very welcome contribution to the field of historical pragmatics and an important step towards a comprehensive account of the pragmatics of the Old Russian birchbark letters."" -Imke Mendoza, Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg in Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 2019"

Author Information

Simeon Dekker, Ph.D. (Leiden University, 2016) is a researcher in Slavic philology. His main focus of research concerns the pragmatics of medieval texts.

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