Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis examines how historians have written about women in the Reformation to determine how their values and assumptions about communication have shaped their interpretations. I use the sociolinguistic methodology of Deborah Tannen, which asserts that men and women have different fundamental ways of viewing and processing the world, and therefore communicating. By exploring the linguistic assumptions being made by historians, based on Tannen’s theory, I will analyze the impact that has on historical interpretation first in the field of Women’s Studies and then more specifically women in the Reformation. The same linguistic analysis will be used to examine the writings of female Reformer Katharina Zell (1498-1562), who provides a firsthand perspective of a woman living and writing during the Reformation. This study demonstrates the importance of historians’ linguistic assumptions and argues that the values and communication styles of both men and women need to be present to gain a clearer picture of the past.