Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2007

The purpose of this paper is to describe the discourse strategies of the defendants of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692. Evidence is derived from the original documents now being re-edited by an international team. A framework for the discussion is provided by politeness theory, although it cannot be applied as such to seventeenth-century courtroom circumstances. In four of the eight cases selected, the defendants followed successful discourse strategies and saved their lives; in another four, the strategies were less successful and the defendants had to die. Cooperativeness was vital for a successful defence. This included providing the court with details and admitting what the person was accused of but denying hurting other people intentionally. The defendant did not argue with the examiner but was humble and willing to help. Unsuccessful defendants stubbornly refused to admit their guilt, denied all involvement in witchcraft, questioned the validity of the evidence and even the intelligence of the court.

This study examines the practices of scribes who recorded the examinations of those accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. The data consists of 68 records of examinations held between March and October 1692 and in January 1693. Each record is coded for two features: use of contextual commentary and evaluative adjectives or adverbs which suggest attitudes and values of the scribes and reflect the pragmatic context. Records are also coded according to presentation in direct discourse or reported discourse. Records presented in direct discourse and those occurring in the early period of the trials contain the greatest number of both contextual commentary and evaluative/subjective adjectives or adverbs. The analysis reveals that the majority of the records are written by four identified scribes.

The present paper underscores the importance of examining the original manuscripts and their context(s) of production, with specific reference to the wealth of documentary material produced in connection with the Salem witchcraft outbreak of 1692. The background to this study is an international project to publish a chronologically structured edition of this material. One central aspect of this work is a reassessment of the role of scribes in the production of these documents. As shown in the paper, scribal profiles can be reconstructed by means of linguistic and palæographic analysis. Specifically, the linguistic and scribal features of two relevant genres (depositions and indictments) are explored here in the light of the 1692 Salem documents.

This paper posits that certain “qualificatory” semantic primes are recruited to serve face-management needs in a metonymic Meaning1>Meaning2 relationship at what Traugott and Dasher (2002) have called the inter­subjective, non-truth-conditional, procedural, scope-over-discourse end of the trajectory of pragmatico-semantic change. Terms expressing smallness, approximativeness, demurral/correction, adversativeness/concession and interrogation are applied in an attenuating manner in a number of languages. The paper draws on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, Sweetser’s (1990), Geeraerts’ (1997) and Kövecses and Radden’s (1998) cognitive and metaphorical/metonymic approaches to etymology, Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change, Haspelmath’s (1999) notions of irreversibility and Kerswill and Williams’ (2002) sociolinguistic concept of “salience”. It is suggested that politeness theory, with its dual conceptualisation to do with conflict-avoidance and social indexing, has strong explanatory power in the two phases of semantic change: innovation and propagation. A new form–function configuration emerges in inter­action to manage rapport and is diffused, provided it is given positive social ­evaluation.

The article examines two episodes from Shakespeare, one from Julius Caesar and the other one from Othello, in order to shed light on the nature of a type of deception often used by a speaker in discourse meant to persuade a hearer to adopt a particular course of action. Drawing on the episodes, two conceptual distinctions are proposed, one between overt and covert intentions and the other between first-order and second-order intentions. It is argued that the distinctions make it possible to formulate a structured framework for analyzing the type of deception in question. The model proposed also draws on Gricean maxims, emphasizing the role of the maxims of Quality and Quantity, first part.