This article focuses on socio-pragmatic aspects of address forms in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century personal letters in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) by comparing the forms found inside and on the outside of a letter. In addition to providing a wider social perspective, the research questions concern the private and public aspects of address formulae and the influence of different participant roles of the writer and the recipient. Address forms are analysed using Bell’s (1984, 2001) audience design model, as well as Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness. The study shows that formulae inside a letter are mainly governed by relative power in the relationship between the writer and the recipient. Address in superscriptions, on the other hand, seems to be the result of taking into consideration both the addressee and the audience with its possible opinions and reactions.
2023. Learning to Write Letters in Sixteenth-Century Florence. Linguistica 63:1-2 ► pp. 273 ff.
Bączkowska, Anna
2022. Forms of Address in Polish Nonprofessional Subtitles. In Language Use, Education, and Professional Contexts [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 71 ff.
Paternoster, Annick
2022. Precedence. In Historical Etiquette, ► pp. 281 ff.
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