Re/reading the Past is concerned with the discourses of history, from the complementary perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The papers in the book stress the discursive construction of the past, focussing on the different social narratives which compete for official acknowledgement. Issues of collective and cultural memory are addressed, reflecting the "linguistic turn" in the Social Sciences. The book covers a range of discourses, interpreting texts from popular culture to academic discourse including the construction and evaluation of past events in a variety of places around the world. It is especially timely in its focus on the construction of time and value in a post-colonial world where history discourses are central to on-going processes of reconciliation, debates on war crimes, and the issues of amnesty and restitution. As such the book fills a significant gap in interdisciplinary debates as well as in register and genre analysis, and will be of general interest to historians, political scientists and discourse analysts as well as students and teachers of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes).

Table of contents

Introduction J.R. Martin and Ruth Wodak 1–16 I. Constructing time and value: Semiotic resources Making history: Grammar for interpretation J.R. Martin 19–57 II. Recent past: Telling stories News as history: Your daily gossip Peter R.R. White 61–89 Challenging media censoring: Writing between the lines in the face of stringent restrictions Christine Anthonissen 91–112 III. Distant past: Making history The discursive construction of individual memories: How Austrian “Wehrmacht” soldiers remember WWII Gertraud Benke and Ruth Wodak 115–138 The languages of the past: On the re-construction of a collective history through individual stories Florian Menz 139–175 Orthopraxy, writing and identity: Shaping lives through borrowed genres in Congo Jan Blommaert 177–194 History as discourse; discourse as history: “The rise of modern China” — A history exhibition in post-colonial Hong Kong John Flowerdew 195–216 IV. Yesteryear: Instilling memories Reconstruals of the past — settlement or invasion? The role of JUDGEMENT analysis Caroline Coffin 219–246 Pearl Harbor in Japanese high school history textbooks: The grammar and semantics of responsibility Christopher Barnard 247–271 Index 273–275