Introduction

This volume offers the first fully-focused study on the language and discourse employed in historical accounts of discovery, exploration and settlement stretching from the 16th-19th centuries and covering areas as far afield as the Americas, Africa, India, Australasia and the Arctic. In the examination of the discourse (and accompanying paratextual features when present), the contributors make use of qualitative and quantitative analysis with the aim of identifying the manner in which the knowledge disseminators of the time adapted, created and exploited the language of the genre in which they are communicating to inform and/or persuade contemporary readers. The chapters focus, in particular, on six genres: print news, manuscript correspondence, journals, dictionaries, travel books and geography schoolbooks. Knowledge dissemination is mediated through these six different genres but in each case the genre in question conveys three common aspects of knowledge dissemination: the factual, the personal and the ideological. The focus is on how domain-specific knowledge is mediated in specialized and popularizing discourse to address different stakeholders.