Roderick McConchie

PhD, Lecturer, Researcher
Room: C613 (Metsätalo) 354 (Vironkatu 1)
Consultation hours: On research leave until Spring 2009

Telephone national: (09) 191 22509 (office)
Telephone international: +358 9 191 22509 (office)

Telephone national: (09) 191 23212 (Varieng centre of excellence)
Telephone international: +358 9 191 23212 (Varieng centre of excellence)

Telephone national: (019) 373 008 (home)
Telephone International: +358 19 373 008
Fax national: (019) 373 782
Fax international: +358 19 373 782

E-mail: roderick.mcconchie(at)helsinki.fi

Research Interests

My research interests cover medical terminology in the sixteenth century, the history of English dictionaries, and the prefix dis- in English, English medical dictionaries, and also have an interest in early English printed books.

I am currently co-writing a book chapter on defining in early modern English medical texts, a book on the prefix dis- in Middle English, based on articles which I have published recently, planning a book on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English medical dictionaries, and have a catalogue of the sixteenth-century English books in the Russian National Library, St. Petersburg, in progress.

I am also actively trying to encourage research into older dictionaries at Helsinki University more generally.

Publications

Recent and forthcoming editions

1. (2006) McConchie, R. W., Heli Tissari, Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
2. (2007) Matti Rissanen, Marianna Hintikka, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, and Rod McConchie (eds.) Change in Meaning and the Meaning of Change. Ed. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki tom. LXII, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
3. (2009) McConchie, R. W., Honkapohja, Alpo, and Tyrkkö, Jukka (eds.) Select Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX 2), Somerville: Cascadilla Press
4. (forthcoming) Ashgate Critical Essays on Early English Lexicographers, Volume 2: Sixteenth Century Lancashire, Ian, gnl. ed. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Recent and forthcoming articles

1. (2007) ‘The Real Richard Howlet’ in Words and Dictionaries from the British Isles in Historical Perspective, edited by John Considine and Giovanni Iamartino. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 39-49.
2. (2007) ‘Discomfort in Middle English’ Studies in Middle English Forms and Meanings ed. Mazzon, Gabriella, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 179-189.
3. (2007) ‘ Dis -history: modelling the introduction and diffusion of a borrowed prefix in Middle English’ in Matti Rissanen, Marianna Hintikka, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, and Rod McConchie (eds.) Change in Meaning and the Meaning of Change. Ed. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki tom. LXII, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 344-71.
4. (2008)‘ Disseisin : the lexeme and the legal fact in early Middle English’ English Historical Linguistics 2006. Vol. II Lexical and Semantic Change, ed. Richard Dury, Maurizio Gotti and Marina Dossena. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 203-216.
5. (2009) “ ‘Propagating what the Ancients Taught and the moderns improved’: The sources of George Motherby’s A New Medical Dictionary; or, a General Repository of Physic, 1775” in McConchie, R. W., Honkapohja, Alpo, and Tyrkkö, Jukka (eds.) Select Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX 2), Somerville: Cascadilla Press, 123-33.
6. (forthcoming) “ ‘Converting ‘this uncertain science into an art’: Innovation and tradition in George Motherby’s A New Medical Dictionary; or, General repository of physic, 1775.” in Proceedings of the 4 th ICHLL conference, Edmonton, July 2008.
7. (forthcoming 2009) ‘English words and compositorial practice in Turner’s Libellus de re herbaria nouus, 1538.’ In "Scribes, Printers, and the Accidentals of Their Texts", Jacob Thaisen and Hanna Rutkowska, eds. Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, vol. [unknown]. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag.

I am a current member of the EETACS project, which supports research co-operation between English departments Helsinki and St. Petersburg and the Russian National Library.

A database on the prefix dis- is now in an advanced stage of compilation, and is now a usable if not complete resource for citations of this prefix up to 1500. This is intended to be a large database derived from the online OED and MED covering the history of the prefix dis- in English in the form of contextual citations. It is hoped eventually to expand this project to cover other affixes in English as well, and to incorporate data from other corpora.