Open Access‘The wickede secte of Saracenys’ – Lexico-semantic means of strengthening the English Christian Self in texts from the Middle English period
Author(s) -
Monika Kirner-Ludwig
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selim. sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval/selim. sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2792-3878
pISSN - 1132-631X
DOI - 10.17811/selim.26.2021.57-84
Subject(s) - period (music) , middle english , perspective (graphical) , linguistics , ethnic group , lexical item , lexico , middle ages , psychology , history , sociology , computer science , artificial intelligence , art , philosophy , lexicon , anthropology , aesthetics , ancient history
This paper focuses on the conceptual category of the Saracen as portrayed in medieval English texts, and the semantic potentials of lexical units used to refer to this ethnic and religious out-group. On the basis of references gathered from broader contexts provided by the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, both the frequency of usage of relevant referring expressions will be looked into. From a historio-pragmatic perspective, it shall be shown that the selected samples present one of many strategies used to strengthen the image of the Christian self by systematically decomposing the image of the ‘misbelieving’ other by means of lexical choice.