Some of my work reflects the ideas and objectives of the Turku English Department’s Pragmatics on the Page project, of which I was a member; it ran until 2017. Under the leadership of Professor Matti Peikola, ‘PoP’ has since partly  morphed into Framing Text: Paratextual Communication in English, 1400-1600  and, subsequently, Early Modern Graphic Literacies, the latter funded by the Academy of Finland from 2021 to  2025. I joined EModGraL in Autumn 2022.

The PoP approach to language history emphasises that the way people read and understand texts is influenced by what they encounter on the page – not just words and clauses but also various visual and material features, such as layout, choice of font or script, use of colour, and so on. Other relevant features include paratexts, elements surrounding the main text (prefaces, running heads, indices, etc.), and diagrams and other devices combining image and text. For me, the most tangible outcome of internalising the ‘PoP’ approach is that I not only read medieval and post-medieval texts exhibiting multilingual practices – or other interesting linguistic features – but also look at them closely, to see how and if the other language – or whatever else I am interested in – has been visually flagged on the page.

PoP-related ideas and approaches appear in some of my recent work, including:

  • Carroll, Ruth, Matti Peikola, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila, Janne Skaffari & Risto Hiltunen. 2013. Pragmatics on the page: Visual text in late medieval English books. European Journal of English Studies 17:1, 54-71.
  • Nurmi, Arja & Janne Skaffari. 2016. Whiche is in Englisshe tong –Managing Latin in English. Paper read at the 19th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Essen.
  • Skaffari, Janne. 2015. Linguistic choices in English manuscripts from the long twelfth century: Visible and hidden multilingualism. Paper read at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
  • Skaffari, Janne. 2016. Code-switching and vernacular support: An early Middle English case study. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 35:2, 203-226.
  • Skaffari, Janne. 2018. Code-switching in the long twelfth century. In Pahta, Päivi, Janne Skaffari & Laura Wright (eds.). Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond (Language Contact and Bilingualism, 15). Berlin & Boston: Mouton, 121-142.
  • Skaffari, Janne. 2024. Flagging multilingual features in post-Conquest manuscripts: Verbal and visual. In Räikkönen, Jenni, Carla Suhr, Minna Palander-Collin, Arja Nurmi, Minna Nevala & Turo Hiltunen (eds.). Multilingualism and Language Variation in English across Genres and Registers: A Festschrift in Honour of Päivi Pahta. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 73-95.
  • Tyrkkö, Jukka & Janne Skaffari. 2021. Graphic elements in early printed grammar books: A survey. Paper read at the Graphic Literacy in the History of English workshop. ICEHL-21 conference, Leiden.
  • Varila, Mari-Liisa, Hanna Salmi, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Janne Skaffari & Matti Peikola. 2017. Disciplinary decoding: Towards understanding the language of visual and material features. In Peikola, Matti, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila & Janne Skaffari (eds.). Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 37). Turnhout: Brepols, 1-20.