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Part of
Earlier North American Englishes
Edited by Merja Kytö and Lucia Siebers
[Varieties of English Around the World G66] 2022
► pp. 37–64

Coordination in the courtroom

The uses of and in the records of the Salem witchcraft trials

| Uppsala University

Previous research has shown that clausal and phrasal uses of and pattern in ways characteristic of different text types in both Present-day and early English. Speech-based text types such as witness depositions and trial records are likely to show higher rates of clausal uses than written-based texts such as science and history writing. The present study turns to the uses of and in a unique resource, the records from the Salem witchcraft trials in New England (1692–1693), comprising a range of speech-related and written-based text categories. To enable comparisons between early American English and British English usage, comparative material is drawn from the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760.

Keywords: conjunction and , Salem witchcraft trials, A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 , past spoken interaction, genre
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and method
    • 2.1The records of the Salem witchcraft trials
    • 2.2The Salem texts included in the present study
    • 2.3Points of comparison: CED and Helsinki Corpus texts
    • 2.4Coordinating and : Principles of classification and research questions
    • 2.5Frequency analyses
  • 3.Clausal and phrasal uses of and
    • 3.1Proportional use of clausal and phrasal and
    • 3.2Rates of occurrence for clausal and phrasal and
  • 4. and in interactive contexts: Exchange coordination
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g66.03kyt
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[no author supplied]
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