Re/reading the past; Editorial page; Title page; LCC page; Table of contents; Introduction; Part I. Constructing time and value; Making history; Part II. Recent past; News as history; Challenging media censoring; Part III. Distant past; The discursive construction of individual memories; The languages of the past; Orthopraxy, writing and identity; History as discourse; discourse as history; Part IV. Yesteryear; Reconstruals of the past -- settlement or invasion?; Pearl Harbor in Japanese high school history textbooks; Index; The series DISCOURSE APPROACHES TO POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CULTURE.
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
