Edited by Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg
[Studies in Language Companion Series 214] 2020
► pp. 333–356
Historical pragmatic analyses have underlined the discourse dependence and pragmatic sensitivity of speech acts. As a result, researchers’ attention has shifted from form, structure and tokenisation of utterances to interactive frameworks. This paper follows suit and argues that speech acts in historical correspondence – in this paper, the letters of the British Colonial Office on the Cape Colony – bear a close resemblance to speech events, interactional moves or speech actions. It presents a qualitative approach to speech act identification and classification that relies on the routines of power and the notion of macro-speech act. In the process of speech act identification, co-textual features and outcomes (perlocutionary effects) serve as crucial reference points. The findings confirm the significance of the status differentials for an early nineteenth-century specialised discourse domain of institutional correspondence.