This paper examines a small corpus of advertisements and letters about marriage that appeared in late eighteenth-century copies of The Times. A pragmatic, discourse-analytic approach is used to investigate how these texts were linked to a context of ‘politeness’ that was composed of three central (and partly overlapping) values: formality, distancing achieved through impersonalisation, and discernment (defined as apparent concern for the well-being of others). It is argued that these text-context links had a performative or creative aspect; the politeness context structured but did not determine the use of language forms to communicate meanings. The paper focuses on how language was used to sever and then to re-align text-context links, or to provide metadiscursive commentary that qualified the politeness context, or to create ambiguity by forging links with equally plausible but incongruous contexts.
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Titolo: | Text-context links in matrimony advertisements and letters in 'The Times' 1785-1800) | |
Autori: | ||
Data di pubblicazione: | 2010 | |
Abstract: | This paper examines a small corpus of advertisements and letters about marriage that appeared in late eighteenth-century copies of The Times. A pragmatic, discourse-analytic approach is used to investigate how these texts were linked to a context of ‘politeness’ that was composed of three central (and partly overlapping) values: formality, distancing achieved through impersonalisation, and discernment (defined as apparent concern for the well-being of others). It is argued that these text-context links had a performative or creative aspect; the politeness context structured but did not determine the use of language forms to communicate meanings. The paper focuses on how language was used to sever and then to re-align text-context links, or to provide metadiscursive commentary that qualified the politeness context, or to create ambiguity by forging links with equally plausible but incongruous contexts. | |
Handle: | http://hdl.handle.net/11584/21963 | |
ISBN: | 978-29536021-0-4 | |
Tipologia: | 4.1 Contributo in Atti di convegno |