A Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England: Some Issues at the Interface of Semantics and Lexicography

This paper reports on issues at the interface between semantics and lexicography that arose out of the data collection and classification of vocabulary in Anglo-Norman and Middle English in order to create a bilingual thesaurus of everyday life in medieval England. The Bilingual Thesaurus project is based at Birmingham City University and the University of Westminster. Issues to be resolved included the definition of an occupational domain; the creation of a methodology of data collection; the delimitation of domain-specific vocabulary; making distinctions between sense and usage; and the categorisation of the lexical items. Some of these issues are general to thesaurus-making, some are specific to the making of historical thesauruses, while some are unique to the production of a thesaurus of two languages whose use overlapped for several centuries in the late medieval period in England.

Studying French-Origin Middle English Lexis Using the Bilingual Thesaurus of Medieval England: A Comparison of the Vocabulary of Two Occupational Domains

This paper investigates how far it is possible to assess the degree of penetration of French-origin lexis into Middle English by means of the structures and data of the Bilingual Thesaurus of Medieval England. It begins with an outline of the aim and scope of the project, describing some of the methodological decisions behind the creation of the Bilingual Thesaurus, such as the use of the Middle English Dictionary and the Anglo Norman Dictionary as sources. Some provisional findings relating to Middle English words of French-origin in the semantic domains of Manufacture, in particular the sub-domains of Metal-working and Woodworking, and Travel by Water are then presented.

Kevin Barry and the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War

Most Irish people, when asked what they know of the life and death of Kevin Barry, will pause for a moment while they recall the words of a famously maudlin ballad. A few points will emerge: ‘a lad of eighteen summers’ … ‘British soldiers tortured Barry’ … ‘refused to turn informer’ … ‘hanged him like a dog’ … ‘another martyr for old Ireland, another murder for the crown’. That they know anything at all about Kevin Barry is testimony, among other things, to the power of popular music for the making of political propaganda. Along with Father Murphy, Seán South and Fergal O’Hanlon, Kevin Barry figures in the pantheon of nationalist Ireland’s popular historical heroes, largely because somebody happened to write a good song about him. In many ways this is unfortunate, for Barry and the rest were once living people, and the process of iconographifying them in popular balladry, like all forms of political propaganda, serves not to clarify their roles in the historical events in which they played a part, but rather to obscure and distort them. So it is worth reconsidering the story of Kevin Barry, for a number of reasons. To begin with, his short life reached its climax at a vital moment in the long struggle for Irish self-government, a moment when the violence unleashed in 1916 burst forth again with renewed savagery on both British and Irish sides, involving in the Barry case the deaths of four young men aged between fifteen and twenty.

Have Anglo-Saxon concepts really influenced the development of European qualifications policy?

This paper considers how far Anglo-Saxon conceptions of have influenced European Union vocational education and training policy, especially given the disparate approaches to VET across Europe. Two dominant approaches can be identified: the dual system (exemplified by Germany); and output based models (exemplified by the NVQ ‘English style’). Within the EU itself, the design philosophy of the English output-based model proved in the first instance influential in attempts to develop tools to establish equivalence between vocational qualifications across Europe, resulting in the learning outcomes approach of the European Qualifications Framework, the credit-based model of European VET Credit System and the task-based construction of occupation profiles exemplified by European Skills, Competences and Occupations. The governance model for the English system is, however, predicated on employer demand for ‘skills’ and this does not fit well with the social partnership model encompassing knowledge, skills and competences that is dominant in northern Europe. These contrasting approaches have led to continual modifications to the tools, as these sought to harmonise and reconcile national VET requirements with the original design. A tension is evident in particular between national and regional approaches to vocational education and training, on the one hand, and the policy tools adopted to align European vocational education and training better with the demands of the labour market, including at sectoral level, on the other. This paper explores these tensions and considers the prospects for the successful operation of these tools, paying particular attention to the European Qualifications Framework, European VET Credit System and European Skills, Competences and Occupations tool and the relationships between them and drawing on studies of the construction and furniture industries.