Lexical choices in Early Modern English devotional prose

Abstract

Religious controversy in English has always been marked by ideologically charged lexicons. Developments in the analysis of machine-readable corpora have enabled more robust conclusions to be drawn about the nature of these vocabularies, relating particular usages to particular confessional orientations. In this paper, part of a long-term research project on the history of English religious vocabulary, an attempt is made to identify “keywords” characteristic of presbyterian, puritan and high Anglican communities of practice within the Church of England. In addition, the paper addresses some methodological and theoretical issues involved in such research, relating to the practice of historical pragmatics.