University Discourse and Ideosemantics: A History of the Tufts College Narrative (1896)

Abstract

This article explores the language of university discourse of the late 19th century. The study is based on the book “History of Tufts College, 1854–1896”, which has a complex genre-stylistic structure. The study adopts an ideosemantic approach, which uncovers culturally significant meanings by examining linguistic elements across various levels. Through discourse and contextual analysis, the study identifies key mechanisms of institutional identity development. The rhetorics of progress casts the college as a leader; the lexicon of institutionalisation reinforces the values of professionalisation; and grammatical structures (nominalisation, passive structures, impersonal sentences) produce an effect of objectivity and organic development. The text’s onomasticon – particularly the names of student fraternities and journals – carries particular weight: these names convey cultural meanings ranging from esoteric codes to irony and professional identity. Moreover, professors’ names appearing in student society rosters reveal a mechanism of social control that channels student energy within prescribed boundaries. By applying the ideosemantic approach to a complete corpus of the 19th century texts for the first time and introducing previously unexamined historical material into scholarly circulation, this study identifies the linguistic mechanisms that shaped institutional identity in American university discourse. These findings will benefit courses in linguistic culturology, language history, onomastics, and the development of instructional materials for analysing historical English texts.

For citation: Varnavskaya E.V., Stebletsova A.O. University Discourse and Ideosemantics: A History of the Tufts College Narrative (1896). Vestnik Severnogo (Arkticheskogo) federal’nogo universiteta. Ser.: Gumanitarnye i sotsial’nye nauki, 2026, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 85–95. https://doi.org/10.37482/2687-1505-V543