Discursive (re)construction of “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as an identity in the eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trial records
This paper provides a qualitative historical (socio)pragmatic analysis of records of three eighteenth-century Hungarian witchcraft trials using a socio-cognitive model of discursive community and identity construction. I aim to describe how the general social and legal context of witchcraft became situated and interpreted in the actual witchcraft trial records from the delegated officials’ perspective. I argue that in the analysed records, the officials did not simply apply a codified definition of “witchcraft”, but they discursively (re)constructed “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as the defendants’ identity. Thus, from the officials’ perspective, discursive community and identity construction established a relationship between the general context of witchcraft and the actual witchcraft trials. In order to reconstruct this process, I investigate the linguistic constructs by which the delegated officials actively created “witchcraft” and the defendants’ “witch” identity as mental constructs.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The general context of witchcraft in the eighteenth-century Hungarian Kingdom
- 2.1The general social context of witchcraft in the eighteenth-century Hungarian Kingdom
- 2.2The general legal context of witchcraft in the eighteenth-century Hungarian Kingdom
- 3.A socio-cognitive model of discursive community and identity construction
- 4.Data and methods
- 5.Discursive (re)construction of “witchcraft” as a community and “witch” as an identity in the three analysed trial records from the delegated officials’ reconstructed perspective
- 5.1The introduction
- 5.2The questions addressed to the witnesses
- 5.3The witness testimonies
- 5.4The judgment
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
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