Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2004

The power structures in northern Baltic Europe in the Middle Ages can be studied through the correspondence between the Swedish authorities and the Hanseatic Councils. The letters were written in three languages: Latin, Low German and Swedish. Low German was the dominant language in the correspondence from the fifteenth century onwards. The aim of the paper is to examine the ways in which power relationships are manifested, including choice of language, conventional expressions of politeness, use of laudatory adjectives when addressing the recipient, use of adverbs to express deference or hedging, and elaborations in orthography. Medieval letter-writing followed models described in various instruction books called summae dictaminis. These reflect the hierarchy of medieval society by classifying senders and recipients of letters according to their social position, and giving instructions for address of one group by another. The European tradition of rules for letter writing can be traced back in an unbroken line to the Roman Empire, and in spite of certain local differences most rules concerning the form of the letter and expressions of politeness were shared all over the continent.

This paper explores the question how far “letters” as one specific text type can be subdivided into smaller groups of texts (i.e. subtypes such as “requests”, “orders”, or “reports”) on the basis of socio-psychological and pragmatic dimensions and factors, including speech act and accommodation theory. This paper argues that this differentiation into socio-pragmatic subtypes actually can be made and that these subtypes materialize in significant systematic morphosyntactic variability. The idea is explored and illustrated on the basis of pronoun and relativizer variation in the late Middle English Paston Letters. In particular, it is shown how authors use their individual stylistic freedom to pursue specific communicative purposes in different types of letters.

This paper analyses lexical features in letters written to and by Margaret Paston, using Fairclough’s (1992) three-dimensional framework for discourse analysis. Historical pragmatics, as a relatively new field, is open to the development of new methodologies and the adaptation of established ones. Although Fairclough’s methodology is intended as a systematic way of approaching modern text, it is shown to be relevant and useful in historical work. The letters are analysed in context, with reference to the discursive practices (production, distribution, and consumption of text) and social practices of the fifteenth century. The analysis shows that Margaret occupies a powerful position within her family and the community.

In the dialogue of correspondence, letters both respond to previous letters and anticipate new ones. The intertextuality existing between letters in a chain of correspondence can be made explicit, and it is these manifest intertextual connections that are explored in this paper. More specifically, the study focuses on the use of references to other letters as intertextual links. The analysis reveals that other letters, previous, future, and even some that were planned but never written, are explicitly present in the majority of the letters passing between Lady Katherine Paston and her fellow correspondents. Some types of references to other letters are constrained by the relationship of the correspondents and the frequency of the correspondence, while others function independently of such factors.

This article focuses on socio-pragmatic aspects of address forms in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century personal letters in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) by comparing the forms found inside and on the outside of a letter. In addition to providing a wider social perspective, the research questions concern the private and public aspects of address formulae and the influence of different participant roles of the writer and the recipient. Address forms are analysed using Bell’s (1984, 2001) audience design model, as well as Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness. The study shows that formulae inside a letter are mainly governed by relative power in the relationship between the writer and the recipient. Address in superscriptions, on the other hand, seems to be the result of taking into consideration both the addressee and the audience with its possible opinions and reactions.

This article explores the history of yours sincerely and yours affectionately as closing formulas in letters. It focuses especially on the rise of the formulas in the eighteenth century, tracing their origin as positive politeness devices which took the place of the pragmatised standard epistolary formula Your most obedient humble servant. The article will also try to find evidence for John Gay (1685–1732), writer and poet, being a linguistic innovator in terms of the research model of social network analysis as developed by Leslie Milroy (1987). It will be argued that John Gay might have been responsible for the adoption and subsequent spread in usage of the formula within his own social network, comprising Pope, Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

The article deals with correspondence in natural history in the eighteenth century between England and North America. The corpus discussed consists of correspondence between John Bartram and Peter Collinson, and between Alexander Garden and John Ellis. The approach used in the study is qualitative and rhetorical; the main point considered is how the letters construct scientific centre and periphery in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. A central concept is the “colonial exchange”, whereby “raw materials” from the colonies — in this case plant and animal specimens, along with proposed identifications and names — are exchanged for “finished products”, in this case codified scientific knowledge contained in publications.