This paper explores questions of identity and social roles in the Spectator community of practice and its broader periodical discourse community in commercial publishing in early eighteenth-century London. A keyword analysis of the Spectator essays reveals the lexical underpinnings of the periodical’s social niche in the form of its eidolon, Mr Spectator. A study comparing the periodicals published in the first two decades of the eighteenth century with the Spectator highlights the different social agendas of the Spectator and contemporary party political periodical papers. The paper concludes that the Spectator’s identity and social roles are distinct from those of its principal authors, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, thereby casting new light on the significance of authorship in the period.
Contributing to studies of standardization in mid eighteenth-century Britain, this paper draws on a corpus of criticism in the new review periodicals in order to explain reviewers’ enthusiastic enforcement of linguistically prescriptive rules. Reflecting consumers’ need for guidance in an expanding market, reviewers often used authors’ language as a seemingly objective index of a book’s quality. However, reviewers’ judgments were sometimes relayed in subjective tones. Reviewers’ satiric perspective in part reflected their dual roles as entertainers and educators, publicly punishing individuals in order to improve standards of writing and reading in a market that was perceived as increasingly socially heterogeneous. Drawing on Bogel’s theory of satire, I also argue that reviewers mocked authors in order to differentiate and elevate themselves.
This paper discusses the formality of epistolary spellings in the correspondence of Elizabeth Montagu and Sarah Scott, eighteenth-century sisters of similar backgrounds yet different social positions. I examine their use of full vs contracted auxiliary verb forms, preterite and past participle spelling variants, and other epistolary contractions and abbreviations in four decades of correspondence. Contractions and abbreviations indicate the level of informality and intimacy in eighteenth-century epistolary spelling. Montagu’s social prominence appears to show even in intimate and familiar communication, whereas Scott’s less significant social standing might have provided more linguistic flexibility. Scott’s style was significantly more informal and leaning towards oral mode than Montagu’s, which suggests that her relative exclusion from the polite society influenced the level of formality in her spelling.
Choosing who and what to report, writers adopt a position in interaction that serves their needs and expectations of the situation as well as the addressee’s expected needs. In this paper, we study reporting from a socio-pragmatic perspective with the aim of understanding the function of reporting in the communicative situations in which it occurs in eighteenth-century personal letters. Our analysis pays attention to the role of the reporter vis-à-vis the addressee, the reporting situation, the subject matter of the report, the identity of the person whose speech is reported, and the form of the reporting frame. The results suggest that reporting in eighteenth-century personal correspondence exhibits genre-specific characteristics but also relates to the writer’s role in the situation.
no human being talks the same way all the time (Hymes 1984: 44) The article examines variation in the use of multilingual resources in the verbal repertoire of one individual in different social roles involving various contexts of discourse in eighteenth-century England. We discuss the language practices of Thomas Twining, scion of the tea merchant family, clergyman and classical scholar, in text representing different genres and registers in the public and private domains. The study shows that the writer’s varying social roles are reflected in patterns of code-switching, functioning as an index of the communicative situation and the interpersonal relationship between the interlocutors.
Social space can be expressed by e.g. the use of modality and person reference. We discuss how variation in power and distance affects the ways an eighteenth-century governess, Agnes Porter, is constrained by her professional role, and by what linguistic means she negotiates shifts between different private and public roles. The results show that Porter’s constant efforts of self-effacement are reflected in her habit of referring more to people other than herself, as well as in her use of epistemic must and avoidance of first-person forms. Porter’s social space appears feminine, and her constrained self-expression shows not only in the use of positive adjectives but also in the overall topic of her letters and journal entries.
This paper analyzes the main strategies employed by encoders of nineteenth-century business letters to encourage the trust of the recipient or to show their trust in the recipient’s skills and qualities, so that successful business relationships may develop. Relying on the sample of business letters included in the Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Correspondence (19CSC; see Dossena 2004; Dury 2006), findings are discussed in the light of the Appraisal system outlined in Martin and White (2005) and White (2007). In particular, I relate this study on stance to earlier ones on the expression of authority (Dossena 2006a, 2006b), as both are functions of the social roles performed by the participants, and complex and adaptable social profiles are constructed through linguistic means. As I could not bear to let such a man pass away with no sketch preserved of his old-fashioned virtues, I hope the reader will take this as an excuse for the present paper, and judge as kindly as he can the infirmities of my description. (R. L. Stevenson, An Old Scotch Gardener (Memories and Portraits [1887]))
The present paper is a corpus-based study which examines social roles as constructed in British nineteenth-century children’s literature. Both gender roles overall as well as the more specific roles of mother and father are investigated. The main approach is to systematically study adjectival descriptions of characters both quantitatively and qualitatively in order to find recurring patterns of description that function as part of defining a social role. The method of classification is primarily through semantic domains. The study shows that the female social role is defined as involving few mental qualities, whereas a pleasant appearance is important. In contrast, social status and positive mental characteristics are important defining factors for the male social role.
This paper explores questions of identity and social roles in the Spectator community of practice and its broader periodical discourse community in commercial publishing in early eighteenth-century London. A keyword analysis of the Spectator essays reveals the lexical underpinnings of the periodical’s social niche in the form of its eidolon, Mr Spectator. A study comparing the periodicals published in the first two decades of the eighteenth century with the Spectator highlights the different social agendas of the Spectator and contemporary party political periodical papers. The paper concludes that the Spectator’s identity and social roles are distinct from those of its principal authors, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, thereby casting new light on the significance of authorship in the period.
Contributing to studies of standardization in mid eighteenth-century Britain, this paper draws on a corpus of criticism in the new review periodicals in order to explain reviewers’ enthusiastic enforcement of linguistically prescriptive rules. Reflecting consumers’ need for guidance in an expanding market, reviewers often used authors’ language as a seemingly objective index of a book’s quality. However, reviewers’ judgments were sometimes relayed in subjective tones. Reviewers’ satiric perspective in part reflected their dual roles as entertainers and educators, publicly punishing individuals in order to improve standards of writing and reading in a market that was perceived as increasingly socially heterogeneous. Drawing on Bogel’s theory of satire, I also argue that reviewers mocked authors in order to differentiate and elevate themselves.
This paper discusses the formality of epistolary spellings in the correspondence of Elizabeth Montagu and Sarah Scott, eighteenth-century sisters of similar backgrounds yet different social positions. I examine their use of full vs contracted auxiliary verb forms, preterite and past participle spelling variants, and other epistolary contractions and abbreviations in four decades of correspondence. Contractions and abbreviations indicate the level of informality and intimacy in eighteenth-century epistolary spelling. Montagu’s social prominence appears to show even in intimate and familiar communication, whereas Scott’s less significant social standing might have provided more linguistic flexibility. Scott’s style was significantly more informal and leaning towards oral mode than Montagu’s, which suggests that her relative exclusion from the polite society influenced the level of formality in her spelling.
Choosing who and what to report, writers adopt a position in interaction that serves their needs and expectations of the situation as well as the addressee’s expected needs. In this paper, we study reporting from a socio-pragmatic perspective with the aim of understanding the function of reporting in the communicative situations in which it occurs in eighteenth-century personal letters. Our analysis pays attention to the role of the reporter vis-à-vis the addressee, the reporting situation, the subject matter of the report, the identity of the person whose speech is reported, and the form of the reporting frame. The results suggest that reporting in eighteenth-century personal correspondence exhibits genre-specific characteristics but also relates to the writer’s role in the situation.
no human being talks the same way all the time (Hymes 1984: 44) The article examines variation in the use of multilingual resources in the verbal repertoire of one individual in different social roles involving various contexts of discourse in eighteenth-century England. We discuss the language practices of Thomas Twining, scion of the tea merchant family, clergyman and classical scholar, in text representing different genres and registers in the public and private domains. The study shows that the writer’s varying social roles are reflected in patterns of code-switching, functioning as an index of the communicative situation and the interpersonal relationship between the interlocutors.
Social space can be expressed by e.g. the use of modality and person reference. We discuss how variation in power and distance affects the ways an eighteenth-century governess, Agnes Porter, is constrained by her professional role, and by what linguistic means she negotiates shifts between different private and public roles. The results show that Porter’s constant efforts of self-effacement are reflected in her habit of referring more to people other than herself, as well as in her use of epistemic must and avoidance of first-person forms. Porter’s social space appears feminine, and her constrained self-expression shows not only in the use of positive adjectives but also in the overall topic of her letters and journal entries.
This paper analyzes the main strategies employed by encoders of nineteenth-century business letters to encourage the trust of the recipient or to show their trust in the recipient’s skills and qualities, so that successful business relationships may develop. Relying on the sample of business letters included in the Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Correspondence (19CSC; see Dossena 2004; Dury 2006), findings are discussed in the light of the Appraisal system outlined in Martin and White (2005) and White (2007). In particular, I relate this study on stance to earlier ones on the expression of authority (Dossena 2006a, 2006b), as both are functions of the social roles performed by the participants, and complex and adaptable social profiles are constructed through linguistic means. As I could not bear to let such a man pass away with no sketch preserved of his old-fashioned virtues, I hope the reader will take this as an excuse for the present paper, and judge as kindly as he can the infirmities of my description. (R. L. Stevenson, An Old Scotch Gardener (Memories and Portraits [1887]))
The present paper is a corpus-based study which examines social roles as constructed in British nineteenth-century children’s literature. Both gender roles overall as well as the more specific roles of mother and father are investigated. The main approach is to systematically study adjectival descriptions of characters both quantitatively and qualitatively in order to find recurring patterns of description that function as part of defining a social role. The method of classification is primarily through semantic domains. The study shows that the female social role is defined as involving few mental qualities, whereas a pleasant appearance is important. In contrast, social status and positive mental characteristics are important defining factors for the male social role.