Pub Date : 2025-08-30DOI: 10.1177/09639470251377442
Jenny Hedley
{"title":"Book review: Authenticity and the public literary self: Will the ‘real’ author please stand up IyerSreedhevi, Authenticity and the Public Literary Self: Will the ‘Real’ Author Please Stand Up, Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, 2023; 216 pp: ISBN 9781003080695, £39.99 (ebk).","authors":"Jenny Hedley","doi":"10.1177/09639470251377442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251377442","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144919318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-08DOI: 10.1177/09639470251357084
Anne Holm, Esme Richardson-Owen
This article presents a corpus stylistic analysis of the embodiedness of Australian-born song writer Nick Cave’s (b. 1957) song lyrics. More specifically, the article explores the use of verbs in Cave’s similes and considers how such constructions, labelled dynamic similes , give rise to a sense of eventfulness anchored in embodiment. Through corpus methods, the prominence of verbs in Cave’s similes is first investigated in contrast to two sub-corpora of the British National Corpus, BNC Fiction & Verse and BNC Newspapers. The comparison shows that Cave’s similes are richer in this regard than the sub-corpora. Further, building on a semantic categorisation of the data, two salient types of simile are analysed more closely: similes containing verbs of movement and psychological processes. Applying insights on profiling verbs from Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), as well as the notion of eventfulness in lyric texts (Hühn, 2016), the article finds that the dynamicity of Cave’s similes typically serves to convey the intensity of mental processes, even with verbs of movement, and is frequently reinforced through progressive verb forms and accompanying sensory lexis. The article additionally concludes that by evoking experiential similarities (Dancygier, 2022), Cave’s similes often invite embodied engagement on the recipient’s part.
{"title":"‘I watch your hands like butterflies landing’: Embodied dynamicity in Nick Cave’s similes","authors":"Anne Holm, Esme Richardson-Owen","doi":"10.1177/09639470251357084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251357084","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a corpus stylistic analysis of the embodiedness of Australian-born song writer Nick Cave’s (b. 1957) song lyrics. More specifically, the article explores the use of verbs in Cave’s similes and considers how such constructions, labelled <jats:italic>dynamic similes</jats:italic> , give rise to a sense of eventfulness anchored in embodiment. Through corpus methods, the prominence of verbs in Cave’s similes is first investigated in contrast to two sub-corpora of the British National Corpus, BNC Fiction & Verse and BNC Newspapers. The comparison shows that Cave’s similes are richer in this regard than the sub-corpora. Further, building on a semantic categorisation of the data, two salient types of simile are analysed more closely: similes containing verbs of movement and psychological processes. Applying insights on profiling verbs from Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), as well as the notion of eventfulness in lyric texts (Hühn, 2016), the article finds that the dynamicity of Cave’s similes typically serves to convey the intensity of mental processes, even with verbs of movement, and is frequently reinforced through progressive verb forms and accompanying sensory lexis. The article additionally concludes that by evoking experiential similarities (Dancygier, 2022), Cave’s similes often invite embodied engagement on the recipient’s part.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"687 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144578318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1177/09639470251341386
Marianne Fish
Studies examining the dialogicity of fictional consciousness within novels have tended to predominantly focus on third-person narratives or free indirect style. Fewer studies have engaged with the first-person mode, for such narratives are often considered to be confined to one viewpoint. Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark is predominantly related through the protagonist’s, Anna Morgan’s, first-person narration; however, Rhys interweaves a multitude of other voices within this mode, creating a dialogic tension with the external viewpoints expressed. Through the representation of differing perspectives in conversation with one another, Rhys demonstrates how individual consciousness is not isolated but shaped and constructed through interaction with the ideological viewpoints of others. The cacophony of voices engaging in dialogic discourse within the protagonist’s consciousness destabilises the boundaries between self and other, between public and private discourses. While Voyage in the Dark is a first-person autodiegetic narrative, through a detailed analysis of linguistic mechanisms, this study highlights the strategies of dialogisation (repetition and echoes, the blurring between private and public discourse, double-voicing, and enacting external viewpoints) employed within Anna’s first-person narration to create a sense of divided consciousness. By investigating how Rhys has employed linguistic devices and effectively utilised modes of consciousness (particularly the interior monologue) to present differing worldviews through one consciousness, this study also exemplifies the relevance of Bakhtin’s concept of dialogicity to first-person narratives.
{"title":"‘There are all sorts of lives’: Internal dialogicity within first-person narration in Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark","authors":"Marianne Fish","doi":"10.1177/09639470251341386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251341386","url":null,"abstract":"Studies examining the dialogicity of fictional consciousness within novels have tended to predominantly focus on third-person narratives or free indirect style. Fewer studies have engaged with the first-person mode, for such narratives are often considered to be confined to one viewpoint. Jean Rhys’s <jats:italic>Voyage in the Dark</jats:italic> is predominantly related through the protagonist’s, Anna Morgan’s, first-person narration; however, Rhys interweaves a multitude of other voices within this mode, creating a dialogic tension with the external viewpoints expressed. Through the representation of differing perspectives in conversation with one another, Rhys demonstrates how individual consciousness is not isolated but shaped and constructed through interaction with the ideological viewpoints of others. The cacophony of voices engaging in dialogic discourse within the protagonist’s consciousness destabilises the boundaries between self and other, between public and private discourses. While <jats:italic>Voyage in the Dark</jats:italic> is a first-person autodiegetic narrative, through a detailed analysis of linguistic mechanisms, this study highlights the strategies of dialogisation (repetition and echoes, the blurring between private and public discourse, double-voicing, and enacting external viewpoints) employed within Anna’s first-person narration to create a sense of divided consciousness. By investigating how Rhys has employed linguistic devices and effectively utilised modes of consciousness (particularly the interior monologue) to present differing worldviews through one consciousness, this study also exemplifies the relevance of Bakhtin’s concept of dialogicity to first-person narratives.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1177/09639470251355809
Adrián Castro
{"title":"The year’s work in stylistics 2023 & 2024","authors":"Adrián Castro","doi":"10.1177/09639470251355809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251355809","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-12DOI: 10.1177/09639470251349482
Peter Harvey
Text World Theory (Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) offers a cognitive linguistic account of the mental representations created during discourse comprehension. To date, text-world accounts of comprehension have largely focussed on the mental representations created in the moment of discourse processing, and little attention has so far been paid to how text-world representations change over time. However, the comprehension of novel-length fictional narratives requires readers to draw upon large amounts of text-specific information as they read later sections of a text. This paper reports an exploratory study of 100 reviews of Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing , posted to the Goodreads website. 50 precis of the novel are isolated, and the text-world conceptual structures of these precis are compared to the original text. Several potential consolidation strategies are identified to account for how text-world mental representations change as the novel is remembered and later recalled. In particular, evidence is presented to show that readers create an evolving mental representation of the fictional world projected by the text which is built and maintained in the long-term memory and remains distinct from the text-world mental representations created in the moment of reading. In the light of these findings, an argument is made for an expanded Text World Theory which accounts for readers’ long-term memories of fictional texts.
{"title":"Strategies of text-world consolidation in reviews of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing","authors":"Peter Harvey","doi":"10.1177/09639470251349482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251349482","url":null,"abstract":"Text World Theory (Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) offers a cognitive linguistic account of the mental representations created during discourse comprehension. To date, text-world accounts of comprehension have largely focussed on the mental representations created in the moment of discourse processing, and little attention has so far been paid to how text-world representations change over time. However, the comprehension of novel-length fictional narratives requires readers to draw upon large amounts of text-specific information as they read later sections of a text. This paper reports an exploratory study of 100 reviews of Margaret Atwood’s novel <jats:italic>Surfacing</jats:italic> , posted to the Goodreads website. 50 precis of the novel are isolated, and the text-world conceptual structures of these precis are compared to the original text. Several potential consolidation strategies are identified to account for how text-world mental representations change as the novel is remembered and later recalled. In particular, evidence is presented to show that readers create an evolving mental representation of the fictional world projected by the text which is built and maintained in the long-term memory and remains distinct from the text-world mental representations created in the moment of reading. In the light of these findings, an argument is made for an expanded Text World Theory which accounts for readers’ long-term memories of fictional texts.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-08DOI: 10.1177/09639470251341387
Christoph Schubert
In gangster movies, mob bosses typically communicate their criminal objectives to henchmen or adversaries in opaque ways. This type of discursive behaviour considerably contributes to the creation of suspense for film audiences, since a startling sense of uncertainty and anticipation is evoked until the intimidatory words eventually culminate in violent actions. This paper adopts a qualitative pragma-stylistic approach based on speech act theory and research on indirectness, aiming to identify stylistic devices in threatening utterances that trigger suspenseful entertainment. The dataset under discussion comprises the three acclaimed feature films Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), and The Irishman (2019) by influential US-American director Martin Scorsese. As will be shown, suspenseful indirectness is created by a number of lexicosemantic cues, including euphemisms, metaphors, general nouns, and epistemic modals. In addition, indirect utterances rely on grammatical techniques such as unresolved pronouns and rhetorical questions. Finally, suspense is triggered by metacommunicative speech acts that support effective mobster communication by referring to the hearers’ comprehension or the speakers’ intention behind their menacing utterances.
{"title":"Suspenseful indirectness in gangster film dialogue: A pragma-stylistic study of Scorsese’s mob bosses","authors":"Christoph Schubert","doi":"10.1177/09639470251341387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251341387","url":null,"abstract":"In gangster movies, mob bosses typically communicate their criminal objectives to henchmen or adversaries in opaque ways. This type of discursive behaviour considerably contributes to the creation of suspense for film audiences, since a startling sense of uncertainty and anticipation is evoked until the intimidatory words eventually culminate in violent actions. This paper adopts a qualitative pragma-stylistic approach based on speech act theory and research on indirectness, aiming to identify stylistic devices in threatening utterances that trigger suspenseful entertainment. The dataset under discussion comprises the three acclaimed feature films <jats:italic>Casino</jats:italic> (1995), <jats:italic>The Departed</jats:italic> (2006), and <jats:italic>The Irishman</jats:italic> (2019) by influential US-American director Martin Scorsese. As will be shown, suspenseful indirectness is created by a number of lexicosemantic cues, including euphemisms, metaphors, general nouns, and epistemic modals. In addition, indirect utterances rely on grammatical techniques such as unresolved pronouns and rhetorical questions. Finally, suspense is triggered by metacommunicative speech acts that support effective mobster communication by referring to the hearers’ comprehension or the speakers’ intention behind their menacing utterances.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143920427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-06DOI: 10.1177/09639470251327500
Olga Timofeeva
Middle English is the essential stage in the development of English second-person pronouns. This is the time when honorific forms ye / you / your emerge, as commonly believed under French influence, gradually become default, and eventually oust the inherited singular forms thou / thee / thi(ne) to marked contexts and regionally restricted varieties. This paper addresses the initial stages of these developments dealing with the earliest attestations of honorific ye in two Middle English romances that make up the so-called ‘Matter of England’. More specifically, its focus is on Havelok the Dane (c.1300) and The Tale of Gamelyn (c.1350), which both have disinheritance as the central conflict and thus narrate stories of protagonists who are socially ambiguous. This essay investigates how this ambiguity is reflected at the level of second-person pronouns when they address, and are addressed by, other characters. Special attention is given to the notion of ‘interactional status’ theorised by Jucker (2006, 2020) and, in particular, to how it can enlighten several cases of switches between thou and ye pronouns in the chosen romances.
中古英语是英语第二人称代词发展的重要阶段。这是敬语形式ye / you / your出现的时候，人们普遍认为是在法国的影响下，逐渐成为默认的，并最终取代了继承的单数形式thou / thee / thi(ne)，成为有标记的上下文和受地区限制的变体。这篇论文讨论了这些发展的最初阶段，处理了两篇中世纪英语浪漫小说中最早的关于敬拜的证明，这两篇浪漫小说构成了所谓的“英格兰的事情”。更具体地说，它的重点是丹麦人Havelok（约1300年）和Gamelyn的故事（约1350年），这两个故事都以剥夺继承权为中心冲突，因此讲述了社会上模棱两可的主人公的故事。本文研究了这种歧义是如何反映在第二人称代词的层次上，当他们称呼和被称呼时，其他角色。本文特别关注了Jucker（2006, 2020）提出的“互动状态”的概念，特别是它如何在选定的浪漫小说中启发你和你代词之间切换的几个案例。
{"title":"Disinherited protagonists in the early history of T/V variation in Middle English","authors":"Olga Timofeeva","doi":"10.1177/09639470251327500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251327500","url":null,"abstract":"Middle English is the essential stage in the development of English second-person pronouns. This is the time when honorific forms <jats:italic>ye</jats:italic> / <jats:italic>you</jats:italic> / <jats:italic>your</jats:italic> emerge, as commonly believed under French influence, gradually become default, and eventually oust the inherited singular forms <jats:italic>thou</jats:italic> / <jats:italic>thee</jats:italic> / <jats:italic>thi(ne)</jats:italic> to marked contexts and regionally restricted varieties. This paper addresses the initial stages of these developments dealing with the earliest attestations of honorific <jats:italic>ye</jats:italic> in two Middle English romances that make up the so-called ‘Matter of England’. More specifically, its focus is on <jats:italic>Havelok the Dane</jats:italic> (c.1300) and <jats:italic>The Tale of Gamelyn</jats:italic> (c.1350), which both have disinheritance as the central conflict and thus narrate stories of protagonists who are socially ambiguous. This essay investigates how this ambiguity is reflected at the level of second-person pronouns when they address, and are addressed by, other characters. Special attention is given to the notion of ‘interactional status’ theorised by Jucker (2006, 2020) and, in particular, to how it can enlighten several cases of switches between <jats:italic>thou</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>ye</jats:italic> pronouns in the chosen romances.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143915993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-06DOI: 10.1177/09639470251327502
Alexandra Effe
Autofiction is characterized by ambiguation of generic conventions. While postmodern autofictional texts often explicitly comment on genre, much autofiction avant-la-lettre merges generic modes more subtly, namely through narrative structure and style. The article argues that, therefore, in the exploration of autofiction in a diachronic perspective, consideration of stylistic and narratological details is particularly important, and it outlines developments in autofiction al literature by discussing how three autofictional precursors from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century create generic ambiguity. Henry Fielding, writing before categories of autobiography and novel were properly established, prefaces his Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755) with comments on the kind of truth it offers by way of rendering autobiographical experiences in artistically crafted form. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writing within the nineteenth century’s much more firmly established genre frames, does not comment on these, but, through pronoun ambiguation and structural elements, imbues the first-person account of the eponymous character of Aurora Leigh (1856) with autobiographical layers of meaning. As part of more explicit challenges to genre conventions from around the turn of the century, Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907) comments on generic hybridity and experiments with first-person attachment, third-person distancing, and stylistic abstraction. From tracing continuities and differences in how these texts create ambiguity about autobiographical and fictional modes and meanings, this article draws conclusions about attempts to define autofiction and about the role of stylistic analysis in understanding genres diachronically. On the one hand, the article demonstrates that autofiction cannot be defined on the basis of formal and stylistic features alone; on the other, it shows that narratological and stylistic analysis, set against the background of generic transformations in the literary landscape more generally, enables a better understanding of how autofiction works in combination with as well as in opposition to established conventions.
{"title":"Developments in autofictional genre signals: Nouns, pronouns and authorial attachment","authors":"Alexandra Effe","doi":"10.1177/09639470251327502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251327502","url":null,"abstract":"Autofiction is characterized by ambiguation of generic conventions. While postmodern autofictional texts often explicitly comment on genre, much autofiction <jats:italic>avant-la-lettre</jats:italic> merges generic modes more subtly, namely through narrative structure and style. The article argues that, therefore, in the exploration of autofiction in a diachronic perspective, consideration of stylistic and narratological details is particularly important, and it outlines developments in autofiction al literature by discussing how three autofictional precursors from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century create generic ambiguity. Henry Fielding, writing before categories of autobiography and novel were properly established, prefaces his <jats:italic>Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon</jats:italic> (1755) with comments on the kind of truth it offers by way of rendering autobiographical experiences in artistically crafted form. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writing within the nineteenth century’s much more firmly established genre frames, does not comment on these, but, through pronoun ambiguation and structural elements, imbues the first-person account of the eponymous character of <jats:italic>Aurora Leigh</jats:italic> (1856) with autobiographical layers of meaning. As part of more explicit challenges to genre conventions from around the turn of the century, Edmund Gosse’s <jats:italic>Father and Son</jats:italic> (1907) comments on generic hybridity and experiments with first-person attachment, third-person distancing, and stylistic abstraction. From tracing continuities and differences in how these texts create ambiguity about autobiographical and fictional modes and meanings, this article draws conclusions about attempts to define autofiction and about the role of stylistic analysis in understanding genres diachronically. On the one hand, the article demonstrates that autofiction cannot be defined on the basis of formal and stylistic features alone; on the other, it shows that narratological and stylistic analysis, set against the background of generic transformations in the literary landscape more generally, enables a better understanding of how autofiction works in combination with as well as in opposition to established conventions.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143915969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-06DOI: 10.1177/09639470251327532
Claudia Claridge
The development of uses of reader (third-person and vocative) are investigated in the Corpus of Late Modern English Text (1710-1920) with regard to frequencies and functions. Overall, reader declines, indicating a shift away from nominal and more formal style. Third-person uses are more common than vocatives, which cluster especially in the early nineteenth century and in emotive, personalized texts. A functional analysis is carried out on treatises and narrative fiction. Readers are positioned and (dis)aligned with the writer through the use of possessive pronouns, quantifiers and adjectives in contrast to bare unmodified uses. Reader occurrences may be explained as metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005) or intersubjective uses. They involve the reader in responsive thought or action with the text and steer them towards interpretations. They are also integrated into emotive and attitudinal contexts, in which overt attention is given to the face needs of the reader.
{"title":"The reader in the text across time and genres","authors":"Claudia Claridge","doi":"10.1177/09639470251327532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251327532","url":null,"abstract":"The development of uses of <jats:italic>reader</jats:italic> (third-person and vocative) are investigated in the Corpus of Late Modern English Text (1710-1920) with regard to frequencies and functions. Overall, <jats:italic>reader</jats:italic> declines, indicating a shift away from nominal and more formal style. Third-person uses are more common than vocatives, which cluster especially in the early nineteenth century and in emotive, personalized texts. A functional analysis is carried out on treatises and narrative fiction. Readers are positioned and (dis)aligned with the writer through the use of possessive pronouns, quantifiers and adjectives in contrast to bare unmodified uses. <jats:italic>Reader</jats:italic> occurrences may be explained as metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005) or intersubjective uses. They involve the reader in responsive thought or action with the text and steer them towards interpretations. They are also integrated into emotive and attitudinal contexts, in which overt attention is given to the face needs of the reader.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143915992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-06DOI: 10.1177/09639470251327491
Christine Elsweiler
This study explores a possible change in politeness conventions in Scottish correspondence written between 1570 and 1750. It is hypothesised that longer request sequences, that is, macro-requests, will display a diachronic shift towards a more prominent use of addressee-oriented face-enhancing speech acts as supportive moves, for instance, compliments or thanking, which have been found to be typical of eighteenth-century politeness culture. While the findings show that macro-requests often include moves aimed at maintaining harmony between the correspondents, there is no apparent increase of face-enhancing addressee-oriented harmonising moves during the period under investigation. Instead, writer-oriented support strategies, such as commitments or apologies, prevail in request sequences featuring harmonising moves, thus suggesting continuity in politeness norms. Nevertheless, regarding the choice of individual support strategies, the decline of commitments towards the addressee in the eighteenth century may indicate a change of conventions towards a less deferential style. These findings for Scottish letters offer a first point of reference for future research into macro-request patterns based on a planned cross-varietal, pragmatically annotated corpus of eighteenth-century correspondence.
{"title":"The conventional organisation of request sequences in Scottish letters (1570–1750)","authors":"Christine Elsweiler","doi":"10.1177/09639470251327491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251327491","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores a possible change in politeness conventions in Scottish correspondence written between 1570 and 1750. It is hypothesised that longer request sequences, that is, macro-requests, will display a diachronic shift towards a more prominent use of addressee-oriented face-enhancing speech acts as supportive moves, for instance, compliments or thanking, which have been found to be typical of eighteenth-century politeness culture. While the findings show that macro-requests often include moves aimed at maintaining harmony between the correspondents, there is no apparent increase of face-enhancing addressee-oriented harmonising moves during the period under investigation. Instead, writer-oriented support strategies, such as commitments or apologies, prevail in request sequences featuring harmonising moves, thus suggesting continuity in politeness norms. Nevertheless, regarding the choice of individual support strategies, the decline of commitments towards the addressee in the eighteenth century may indicate a change of conventions towards a less deferential style. These findings for Scottish letters offer a first point of reference for future research into macro-request patterns based on a planned cross-varietal, pragmatically annotated corpus of eighteenth-century correspondence.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143916083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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