Cover not available
Article published In:
Corpus-Pragmatic Studies of Democratization in Public Discourses: New perspectives, methods and materials
Edited by Turo Hiltunen, Turo Vartiainen and Jenni Räikkönen
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 25:2] 2024
► pp. 215–244

A diachronic corpus-pragmatic approach to democratization

The evolution of newspaper editorials, 1860–1979

ORCID logo | University of Vigo
ORCID logo | University of Balearic Islands
Democratization is often invoked as an explanatory factor for diachronic linguistic developments. We believe that at the root of democratization often lies the pragmatic negotiation of power relations, whereby a more democratic use of language can reduce the distance between addresser and addressee. This article examines the evolution of power relations in the New York Times editorials from 1860 to 1979 as represented in COHA. After a quantitative analysis of the evolution of three pragmatic variables that index democratization, the study offers a qualitative analysis with the aim of anchoring them to the situational context of newspaper editorials, especially regarding the power relations negotiated in this register over time. This paper also examines the impact of socio-historical events on the evolution of power relations and shows that they are intimately linked.
Keywords: democratization, (semi)modals, contractions, passives, power relations, pragmatic variables
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Modal and semi-modal verbs
    • 2.2Contractions
    • 2.3Passive voice
  • 3.Corpus, methodology and general results
    • 3.1(Semi-)modals
    • 3.2Contractions
    • 3.3Passives
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Modals and semi-modals
    • 4.2Contractions
    • 4.3Passives
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora
Published online: 9 August 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00074.seo
References (67)
References
Bell, Allan. 1991. The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Register as a Predictor of Linguistic Variation.” Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 8 (1): 9–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. “Text-Linguistic Approaches to Register Variation.” Register Studies 1 (1): 42–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Susan Conrad. 2009. Register, Genre and Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Bethany Gray. 2012. “The Competing Demands of Popularization vs. Economy: Written Language in the Age of Mass Literacy.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, 314–328. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “The New York Times.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed 11 March, 2023. [URL]
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buschfeld, Sarah, and Alexander Kautzch. 2020. Modelling World Englishes: A Joint Approach to Postcolonial and Non-Postcolonial Varieties. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Peter. 2009. “Modals and Quasi-Modals in World Englishes.” World Englishes 28 (3): 281–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Grammatical Colloquialism and the English Quasi-Modals: A Comparative Study.” In English Modality. Core, Periphery and Evidentiality, ed. by Juana I. Marín-Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús Hita, and Johan van der Auwera, 155–169. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, Peter, and Xinyue Yao. 2013. “Colloquial Features in World Englishes.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18 (4): 479–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Farrelly, Michael, and Elena Seoane. 2012. “Democratization.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, 392–401. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grafmiller, Jason. 2014. “Variation in English Genitives across Modality and Genres.” English Language and Linguistics 18 (3): 471–496. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hagopian, Patrick. 2009. The Vietnam War in American Memory. Veterans, Memorials and the Politics of Healing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Hallin, Daniel C. 1984. “The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media.” The Journal of Politics 46 (1): 2–24. DOI logo
Hiltunen, Turo, and Lucía Loureiro-Porto. 2020a. “Democratization of Englishes: Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches.” Language Sciences 791 (May). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(eds). 2020b. New Perspectives on Democratization: Evidence from English(es). Special issue of Language Sciences 791 (May).Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne, and Christian Mair. 1999. ““Agile” and “Uptight” Genres: The Corpus-Based Approach to Language Change in Progress.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4 (2): 221–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2015. “Genre, Discipline and Identity.” English for Academic Purposes 191: 32–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 2001. ““Style” as Distinctiveness: The Culture and Ideology of Linguistic Differentiation.” In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. by Penelope Eckert, and John R. Rickford, 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H., and Irma Taavitsainen. 2012. “Pragmatic Variables.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy, and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 293–306. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics: Intersections and Interactions.” In Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics, ed. by Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker, and Jukka Tuominen, 3–26. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 2003. “Modality on the Move: The English Modal Auxiliaries 1961–1992.” In Modality in Contemporary English, ed. by Roberta Facchinetti, Manfred Krug, and Frank Palmer, 223–240. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Recent Grammatical Change in English: Data, Description, Theory.” In Advances in Corpus Linguistics: Papers from the 23rd International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 23), Göteborg 22–26 May 2002, ed. by Karin Aijmer, and Bengt Altenberg, 61–81. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “The Modals ARE Declining.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16 (4): 547–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Where Have All the Modals Gone? An Essay on the Declining Frequency of Core Modal Auxiliaries in Recent Standard English.” In English Modality: Core, Periphery and Evidentiality, ed. by Juana I. Marín Arrese, Marta Carretero, Jorge Arús Hita, and Johan van der Auwera, 95–115. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair, and Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lefkowitz, Julia. 2016. “‘Tabloidization’ or Dual-Convergence: Quoted Speech in Tabloid and ‘Quality’ British Newspapers 1970–2010.” Journalism Studies 19 (3): 353–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loureiro-Porto, Lucía. 2020. “Singular they in Asian Englishes: A Case of Linguistic Democratization?” In Crossing Linguistic Boundaries: Systemic, Synchronic and Diachronic Variation in English, ed. by Paloma Núñez-Pertejo, María José López-Couso, Belén Méndez-Naya, and Javier Pérez-Guerra, 187–209. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021a. “Linguistic Colloquialisation, Democratisation and Gender in Asian Englishes.” In Gender in World Englishes, ed. by Tobias Bernaisch, 176–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2021b. “Linguistic Democratization in HKE across Registers: The Effects of Prescriptivism.” Research in Corpus Linguistics 9 (2): 64–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loureiro-Porto, Lucía, and Turo Hiltunen. 2020a. “Democratization and Gender-Neutrality in English(es).” Journal of English Linguistics 48 (3): 215–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(eds). 2020b. Democratization and Gender-neutrality in English(es). Special issue of Journal of English Linguistics 48 (3).Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1997. “Parallel Corpora: A Real-Time Approach to the Study of Language Change in Progress.” In Corpus-Based Studies in English, ed. by Magnus Ljung, 195–209. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation, and Standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the Transnational Importance of Mobile and Mediated Vernaculars. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Cross-Variety Diachronic Drifts and Ephemeral Regional Contrasts: An Analysis of Modality in the Extended Brown Family of Corpora and What It Can Tell Us About the New Englishes.” In Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, ed. by Peter Collins, 119–146. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian, and Geoffrey Leech. 2006. “Current Change in English Syntax”. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ed. by Bas Aarts, and April McMahon, 318–342. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Millar, Neil. 2009. “Modal Verbs in TIME: Frequency Changes 1923–2006.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14 (2): 191–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myhill, John. 1995. “Change and Continuity in the Functions of the American English Modals.” Linguistics 33 (2): 157–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Office of the Historian. n.d. “The Neutrality Acts, 1930s.” Accessed 19 November 2021. [URL]
Perlman, Merrill. 2018. “The History of The New York Times Stylebook.” Columbia Journalism Reports. Accessed 11 March, 2023. [URL]
Priestley, Jamie. 2013. “A Paradoxical Approach to Crisis.” In Discourse and Crisis. Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 465–475. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reuters. 2019. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Accessed 11 March, 2023. [URL]
Röthlisberger, Melanie, Jason Grafmiller, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2017. “Cognitive Indigenization Effects in the English Dative Alternation.” Cognitive Linguistics 28 (4): 673–710. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Klaus P., and Anne Barron. 2008. “Where Pragmatics and Dialectology Meet: Introducing Variational Pragmatics.” In Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages, ed. by Klaus P. Schneider and Anne Barron, 1–32. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schudson, Michael. 2001. “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism.” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 2 (2): 149–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 2006. “Changing Styles: On the Recent Evolution of Scientific British and American English.” In Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms: English from 1500–2000, ed. by Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Dieter Kastovsky, and Nikolaus Ritt, 191–211. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Syntactic Complexity, Discourse Status and Animacy as Determinants of Grammatical Variation in Modern English.” English Language and Linguistics 13 (3): 365–384. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seoane, Elena, and Marianne Hundt. 2017. “Voice Alternation and Authorial Presence: Variation across Disciplinary Areas in Academic English.” Journal of English Linguistics 46 (1): 3–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seoane, Elena, and Lucía Loureiro-Porto. 2005. “On the Colloquialization of Scientific British and American English.” ESP Across Cultures 21: 106–118.Google Scholar
Staples, Shelley. 2015. “Spoken Discourse.” In The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, ed. by Douglas Biber and Randi Reppen, 271–291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma, and Andreas H. Jucker. 2010. “Expressive Speech Acts and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century English.” In Eighteenth-Century English: Ideology and Change, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 159–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
The White House. 2006. “Woodrow Wilson.” Accessed 19 November, 2021. [URL]
Westin, Ingrid. 2002. Language Change in English Newspaper Editorials. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
White, Peter R. R. 2012. “Exploring the Axiological Workings of ‘Reporter Voice’ News Stories – Attribution and Attitudinal Positioning.” Discourse, Context & Media 1 (2–3): 57–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wicker, Tom. 1978. On Press. A Top Reporter’s Life in, and Reflections on, American Journalism. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. 2006. American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Corpora
Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Available online at [URL]