Cover not available
Part of
Norms and Conventions in the History of English
Edited by Birte Bös and Claudia Claridge
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 347] 2019
► pp. 167–190

Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing

ORCID logo
Letters of the Early Modern period are typically composed of set parts, such as a salutation or letter-closing formulae, and of less conventionalised passages. In both conventional and non-conventional parts predictive and intentional shall and will are regularly used. This comparative study of Early Modern English (EModE) and Older Scots (OSc) official letters investigates how formulaic conventions and pragmatic function influenced the use of shall and will. The findings show that in OSc official letters written between 1500 and 1700 shall, irrespective of whether it has a predictive or an intentional meaning, is favoured over will for conventionalised commissive speech acts. Outside such conventional uses, shall became rare in the 17th century. In the English letters, the commissive uses of shall declined after the first half of the 16th century. Will, by contrast, is preferred for non-commissive uses in both English and Scots letters.
Keywords: will, shall, formulaic convention, pragmatic function, letters
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Source material and method
  • 3.Predictive shall and will
    • 3.1Certain vs non-certain predictions
    • 3.2Modal meanings
      • Animate subjects
      • Epistemicity
    • 3.3Linguistic criteria signalling subjectivity
    • 3.4Certain vs non-certain predictions in official letters and their pragmatic uses
      • Certain vs non-certain predictions
      • Will in directive speech acts
      • Shall in commissive speech acts
    • 3.5Distribution of certain and non-certain predictions
    • 3.6The distribution of commissive and directive speech acts
      • Gradual restriction of shall to commissive uses in Scots letters after 1570
      • Declining frequency of polite directive will after 1570
  • 4.Intentional shall and will and the role of commissive speech acts
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.347.09els
References (49)
References
Archer, Dawn. (2010). Speech Acts. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (Eds.), Historical Pragmatics (379–417). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Beal, Joan. (1997). Syntax and Morphology. In Charles Jones (Ed.), The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language (335–77). Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johannsson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, & Finegan, Edward. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. (2012). Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, & Levinson, Stephen. (1987). Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Annie I. (Ed.). (1927). The Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine. Including Some Three Hundred Letters from 20th February to 15th May 1560. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
CEECS = Nevalainen, Terttu et al. (1998). Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler. Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. (1983). The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Davis, Norman. (1965). The Litera Troili and English Letters. The Review of English Studies, 16:63, 233–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella. (2008). Two Polite Speech Acts from a Diachronic Perspective. Aspects of the Realisation of Requesting and Undertaking Commitments in the Nineteenth Century Commercial Community. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (Eds.), Speech Acts in the History of English (114–31). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DOST = Craigie, William, Aitken, Adam J., Stevenson, James, & Dareau, Marace (Eds.). (1932). A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. Oxford: OUP. Retrieved from [URL]
Elsweiler, Christine. (2016). Gif Youre Grace Will Command Me with Any Service Ye Sall Fynd me Obedient: On the Use of Will and Shall in Older Scots If-clauses. Scottish Language, 35, 51–83.Google Scholar
(2018). Why Scotsmen Will Drown and Shall Not Be Saved: The Historical Development of Will and Shall in Older Scots. In Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert & Charlotte Maekelberghe (Eds.), Explorations in English Historical Syntax. 235–257. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Susan M. (2008). Epistolary Identity: Convention and Idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English Letters. In Marina Dossena & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Eds.), Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence. Methodology and Data (77–112). Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
Gotti, Maurizio, Dossena, Marina, Dury, Richard, Facchinetti, Roberta, & Lima, Maria. (2002). Variation in Central Modals: A Repertoire of Forms and Types of Usage in Middle English and Early Modern English. Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. (1983). The Semantics of Will in Present-Day British English. Brussel: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie Voor Wetenschappen, Letteren En Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse Der Letteren.Google Scholar
HC = Rissanen, Matti et al. (1991). The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
HCOS = Meurman-Solin, Anneli. (1995). The Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots. Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, & Pullum, Geoffrey. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H., & Taavitsainen, Irma. (2008). Speech Acts Now and Then. Towards a Pragmatic History of English. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (Eds.), Speech Acts in the History of English (1–23). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2013). English Historical Pragmatics. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja. (1991). Variation and Diachrony, with Early American English in Focus. Frankfurt: Lang.Google Scholar
. (1996). Manual to the Diachronic Part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Coding Conventions and Lists of Source Texts. (3rd ed.). Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. Retrieved from [URL]
Leech, Geoffrey. (2004). Meaning and the English Verb. (3rd ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
López-Couso, María José (2010). Subjectification and Intersubjectification. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (Eds.), Historical Pragmatics (127–163). Berlin; New York: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. (1982). Deixis and Subjectivity: Loquor, ergo sum? Speech, Place, and Action. In Robert Jarvella & Wolfgang Klein (Eds.), Studies in Deixis and Related Topics (101–124). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Marshall, Rosalind. (2004). Mary (1515–1560). In David Cannadine (Ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: OUP. Retrieved from [URL]
McCafferty, Kevin, & Moreno, Carolina Amador. (2012). ‘I Will Be Expecting a Letter from You Before This Reaches You’: A Corpus-Based Study of Shall/Will Variation in Irish English Correspondence. In Marina Dossena & Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (Eds.): Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe (179–204). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merriman, Marcus. (2004a). Douglas, Sir George, of Pittendriech (1490?-1552). In David Cannadine (Ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: OUP. Retrieved from [URL]
. (2004b). Hepburn, Patrick, Third Earl of Bothwell (c.1512–1556). In David Cannadine (Ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: OUP. Retrieved from [URL]
Meurman-Solin, Anneli. (1995). A New Tool: The Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450–1700). In ICAME Journal, Vol. 19, 49–62.Google Scholar
Miller, Jim. (2008). Scottish English: Morphology and Syntax. In Bernd Kortmann & Clive Upton (Eds.), Varieties of English: The British Isles (299–327). Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Nevala, Minna. (2004). Address in Early English Correspondence: Its Forms and Socio-Pragmatic Functions. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2001). Continental Conventions in Early English Correspondence. In Hans-Jörg Diller & Manfred Görlach (Eds.), Towards a History of English as a History of Genres (203–24). Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
. (2004). Letter Writing. Introduction. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 5:2, 181–336.Google Scholar
Nurmi, Arja. (1998). Manual for the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler CEECS. Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki. Retrieved from [URL]
. (2003). Youe Shall See I Will Conclude in It: Sociolinguistic Variation of WILL/WOULD and SHALL/SHOULD in the Sixteenth Century. In David Hart (Ed.), English Modality in Context: Diachronic Perspectives (89–108). Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
OED = Simpson, John, & Weiner, Edmund, (Eds.). (1989). Oxford English Dictionary. (2nd ed.). John Simpson, Edmund Weiner & Michael Proffitt (Eds.) (1993–1997). Additions Series. John Simpson, Edmund Weiner & Michael Proffitt (Eds.) (March 2000-). OED Online (in progress). (3rd ed.). Oxford: OUP. Retrieved from [URL]
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Stephen, Leech, Geoffrey, Svartvik, Jan. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna. (2010). Correspondence. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (Eds.), Historical Pragmatics (651–77). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1996). Forms of Address in Early English Correspondence. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language History: Studies Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (167–81). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Richardson, Malcolm. (1984). The ‘Dictamen’ and Its Influence on Fifteenth-Century English Prose. Rhetorica, 2:3, 207–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2001). The Fading Influence of the Medieval Ars Dictaminis in England after 1400. Rhetorica, 19: 2, 225–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ronan, Patricia. (2014). Tracing Uses of Will and Would in Late Modern British and Irish English. In Simone Pfenninger, Olga Timofeeva, Anne Gardner, Alpo Honkapohja, Marianne Hundt & Daniel Schreier (Eds.), Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English (239–56). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. (2009). An Introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. (1989). On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change. Language, 65, 31–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1995). Subjectification in Grammaticalisation. In Dieter Stein, & Susan Wright (Eds.), Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives (31–54). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2010). (Inter)subjectivity and (Inter)subjectification: A Reassessment. In Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte & Hubert Cuyckens (Eds.): Subjectification, Intersubjectification, and Grammaticalisation (29–71). Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, & Dasher, Richard. (2002). Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Elsweiler, Christine
2024. Modal may in requests. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 25:3 ► pp. 355 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.