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Article published In:
Historical (socio)pragmatics at present
Edited by Matylda Włodarczyk and Irma Taavitsainen
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18:2] 2017
► pp. 235–251

“He tells us that”

Strategies of reporting adversarial news in the English Civil War

| University of Florence

In this paper, I examine a form of argumentation employed by one of the most prominent parliamentarian news pamphlets of the English Civil War (1642–1649). The pamphlet in question is Mercurius Britanicus. It was founded to counter through its pages the news that was being published in Mercurius Aulicus, the foremost royalist publication. In its animadversion of Aulicus’s news, Britanicus first repeated the royalist text, and then responded to it. In my study, I shall focus on instances where the not wholly faithful reporting of Aulicus’s text leads to (socio)pragmatic meanings. I have taken into consideration both the wider social context in which the pamphlet writers were writing as well as the immediate situational context – the pamphlet as a genre. In my analysis of Britanicus’s animadversion, I examine titles of courtesy and the omission and substitution of words.

Keywords: animadversion, controversies, English Civil War, historical (socio)pragmatics, news pamphlets
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3. Britanicus’s reporting strategies
    • 3.1Titles of courtesy
    • 3.2Omission and substitution of words
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • References
Published online: 9 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00004.bro
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