My thesis
@TypicalRussian (747)
Budennovsk, Russian Federation
November 25, 2015 10:14am CST
I am a 4th year post-graduate student at Voronezh State Pedagogical Universuty. My thesis's topic deals with professions' evolution in English. It means i have to investigate several english history periods and looked at the changes that occur with lexico-semantic field "names of professions".
I took Old English period, Middle English period, Victorian period and modern period. Firstly i had to count all the professions and occupations in each period. So Old English provided me with 404 professions, Middle English-1556, Victorian-3698 and Modern-28963.
When i copied all the periods' professions and counted them, i felt giddy. The reason is that i will have to devide them all into thematical groups, e.g. Military, Clergy, Non-traditional activities, Merchants....
Nevertheless i still like the work and i hope to finish the research next year. I will tell you if i find something interesting for you, co-workers!:)
A copy from Bubblews
3 people like this
3 responses
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
25 Nov 15
That sounds to be a fascinating topic! I think that the increase in professions must be partly due to people wanting to define their roles more specifically and probably a lot of that is to do with people wanting to feel 'special' and a little more than the ordinary. Someone who worked with wood and also made furniture, for example, would be happy to just call himself a carpenter, perhaps, in mediaeval times but, later on, would think himself rather better than that and might style himself a joiner or a cabinet maker - an interesting reflection on social status as well as specialisation.
3 people like this
@Rollo1 (16676)
• Boston, Massachusetts
26 Nov 15
With the proliferation of professions, it means that anyone can grow up to be whatever they want to be! I suppose that when life was simpler, there were fewer things that people needed and fewer they would pay someone to do for them.
2 people like this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
30 Nov 15
sounds an intriguing project - good luck with it
1 person likes this
