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    Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gillen. J. (2013) Writing Edwardian Postcards. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17 (4) 488-521, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josl.12045/abstract. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

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Writing Edwardian postcards

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>09/2013
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Sociolinguistics
Issue number4
Volume17
Number of pages34
Pages (from-to)488-521
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The Picture Postcard was an extraordinarily popular innovation at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe, enabling writers to send brief, multimodal messages through a cheap communications channel, in a ‘culture of speed’ (Keep 2001). With several deliveries a day, this could be experienced as closer to the synchronicity of the digital communications than vernacular written communications in the intervening period. I examine the writing of ten British Edwardian picture postcards from a collection of three thousand. Analysis of the writing, writtenness and multimodality (Lillis and McKinney this volume) of the postcards is combined with historical investigations of public records. Through this innovative approach to the construction of text histories, I demonstrate the value of applying the ethnographic sensibility of Literacy Studies to these communications that accomplished diverse and rich purposes and explore connections with claims made about contemporary digital practices.

Bibliographic note

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gillen. J. (2013) Writing Edwardian Postcards. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17 (4) 488-521, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josl.12045/abstract. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.