The introductory chapter positions the volume in relation to the discussion of historical knowledge building from different perspectives, including the philosophy of history, history education, and knowledge structures from a sociological perspective. The chapter explains the usefulness of studying knowledge building in history from a functional linguistic perspective and provides an overview of the Systemic Functional Linguistics initiatives since the 1980s. It concludes with a preview of the contributory chapters in this collection.

‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’ In using this phrase (a reappropriation of one written by Kipling), the pioneering postcolonial historian C. L. R. James synthesised his interpretation of the vital significance of cricket for the growing West Indian nationalism of the twentieth century (James, 1963). Yet for those not familiar with this work, the phrase likely gives little of this meaning or reveals any of its significance. This chapter explores how particular terminology, ways of speaking, and phrases such as this come to be imbued with deep uncommon-sense and values-based meaning in history. Through analysis using a developing model of tenor in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the chapter argues that such axiologically charged rhetoric functions in the humanities in ways like that of technicality in science. Using texts from James’ memoir Beyond a Boundary, it explores how a range of rhetorical strategies draw on the discourse semantic resources of CONNEXION that links stretches of text and APPRAISAL that evaluates and positions meanings in order to synthesise meaning and help transport it to other texts across contexts.

Chapter 4 examines social protocols in public discourse, representing the realm of ‘overly’ ordinary language use. The term ‘public discourse’ means both monologues and dialogues that take place in public, often through mediatised events or written (online) pieces which are available for, or even addressed to, members of the public. ‘Social protocols’ describe forms of language use associated with ‘politeness’ in public discourse specifically, where ‘politeness’ in the interpersonal sense is hardly needed, i.e., such forms at first sight may seem to be entirely ‘superfluous’ if not ‘redundant’. Because if this, while social protocols and mediatised public aggression (studied in Chapter 3) may appear to have little in common at first sight, interestingly both of them have an ‘unreasonable’ element. This sense of unreasonableness however dissolves once one looks at such forms of language use through the ritual perspective. As a case study, Chapter 4 examines the ritual conventions of social protocols in a corpus of Chinese public announcements made in the wake of a major social crisis.

Chapter 5 focuses on the phenomenon of mimesis. All rituals are mimetic because ritual language use itself triggers replication and reciprocation. However, Chapter 5 will show that in various interactionally complex rituals one can observe a specific mimetic phenomenon – ‘performative mimesis’ – which has not received sufficient attention in the study of language use, and which is worth exploring if one wants to understand why in certain ritual contexts language users play ‘roles’. Simply put, the concept of ‘performative mimesis’ refers to contrived interactional performance whereby the performer sustains mimicking a predated interactional schema, just like an actor in a theatre manages a performance on stage by enacting a role. Performative mimesis is a particularly interesting phenomenon to consider because the participants of a ritual which necessitates such mimetic behaviour follow often invisible and uncodified scripts. Chapter 5 includes a case study which describes performative mimesis in Chinese university military training courses, representing an understudied ritual drawn from the realm of higher education in China.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the present book, by outlining its objectives, providing a working definition for ritual, and introducting the concept of the ritual perspective. The chappter also introduces the conventions used in this book and overviews its contents.

Chapter 12 summarises the contents of the present book and proposes future areas of research.

Chapter 9 examines how speech acts associated with ritual can be examined in a replicable way. The chapter makes an argument against ‘identifying’ new so-called ‘ritual speech acts’ ad libitum because such a procedure shuts the door on studying speech acts through which ritual is realised in a replicable way. Instead, it is a more productive practice to identify and describe one’ subject of analysis with the aid of a finite typology of speech acts. The next task is to consider how this speech act is realised in a particular ritual frame. Chapter 9 provides a case study of the ritual phenomenon of ‘admonishing’ in a corpus of ancient Chinese texts. Admonishing represents a ritual realisation type of the Attitudinal speech act category Suggest (do-x)/(not-to-do-x).