The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English
A pragmatic approach
Author
This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords.
This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.
This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 95] 2002. viii, 263 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments | p. vii
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Introduction | pp. 1–15
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1. The pragmatics of epistolary conversation: Preliminary considerations | pp. 17–33
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2. Context and the linguistic construction of epistolary worlds | pp. 35–54
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3. Making and reading epistolary meaning | pp. 55–86
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4. Sociable letters, acts of advice and medical counsel | pp. 87–128
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5. Epistolary acts of seeking and dispensing patronage | pp. 129–174
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6. Intersubjectivity and the writing of the epistolary interlocutor | pp. 175–206
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7. Relevance and the consequences of unintended epistolary meaning | pp. 207–231
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Making meaning in letters: a lesson in reading | pp. 233–240
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Index | pp. 253–258
“This is a rich and stimulating book which carries much information and valuable insights for readers from different backgrounds. It is based on a well-chosen corpus of letters and it provides perceptive
and fruitful analyses of letters from a wide array of social contexts and with pragmatic functions characteristic of their historical period.”
and fruitful analyses of letters from a wide array of social contexts and with pragmatic functions characteristic of their historical period.”
Gerd Fritz, University of Giessen, in Pragmatics & Cognition, Vol. 13:2 (2005)
Cited by
Cited by 38 other publications
Amador-Moreno, Carolina P. & Kevin McCafferty
2015. “Sure this is a great country for drink and rowing at elections”. In Pragmatic Markers in Irish English [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 258], ► pp. 270 ff. 
Barnes, Diana G.
Barnes, Diana G.
Black, Andrew
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2022. Historical sociolinguistics. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 756 ff. 
Crane, Cori
Dossena, Marina
2019. Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective?. In Keeping in Touch [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 10], 
Dunan-Page, Anne & Clotilde Prunier
D’Arcy, Alexandra
Fitzmaurice, Susan
Fritz, Gerd
2018. Chapter 1. The pragmatic organization of controversies. In Historical Pragmatics of Controversies [Controversies, 14], ► pp. 1 ff. 
Gardner, Anne-Christine
2022. Chapter 12. Towards a companionate marriage in Late Modern England?. In English Historical Linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 358], ► pp. 288 ff. 
Harvey, Sara & Judith Sribnai
House, Juliane, Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu & Wenrui Shi
2023. Historical language use in Europe from a contrastive pragmatic perspective. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 
Jucker, Andreas H.
Jucker, Andreas H.
Jucker, Andreas H.
Kiełkiewicz‐Janowiak, Agnieszka
King, Jeremy
2018. Chapter 6. Hasta perder la última gota de mi sangre. In Language Variation and Contact-Induced Change [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 340], ► pp. 127 ff. 
Kádár, Dániel Z.
Kádár, Dániel Z.
Kádár, Dániel Z.
Marcus, Imogen
Marcus, Imogen
Modarelli, Giuseppe
Nevala, Minna & Minna Palander-Collin
Nyholm, Linda, Lisbet Nyström & Unni Å. Lindström
Padilla-Moyano, Manuel
Romaine, Suzanne
Siebers, Lucia
2019. Chapter 10. ‘[T]his is all answer soon’. In Keeping in Touch [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 10], 
Van Hensbergen, Claudine
[no author supplied]
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General