Eighteenth-century letter-writing was an art governed by many rules, but letter-writers still found the freedom to express their personality and indicate their position within the confines of these...Show moreEighteenth-century letter-writing was an art governed by many rules, but letter-writers still found the freedom to express their personality and indicate their position within the confines of these rules. Using methodology based on the works of Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2009), Nevala (2009), Sairio (2013), among others, this thesis examines the use of referential language in letters written by Francis Napier (1758–1823) to Mary Hamilton (1756–1816) in order to study how this language is used to fashion an identity and signal the relationship between the correspondents. The analysis separates formulaic language, such as opening and closing formulas, from other forms of referential language, such as pronoun usage, nominal references, and intertextual references.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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The development of late modern Scottish English (1700-1900) is characterized by heavy amounts of prescriptivism. This specifically took the form of a process of anglicisation which pushed the...Show moreThe development of late modern Scottish English (1700-1900) is characterized by heavy amounts of prescriptivism. This specifically took the form of a process of anglicisation which pushed the previously high-status Scots language variety into the margins. Scottish linguistic features were proscribed in favour of London-English variants, and numerous studies have attested how the writings of upper- and middle-class Scottish authors took over the higher-prestige anglicised variants at the expense of traditional Scottish forms. How these language ideologies affected the usage of lower-class Scots, though, has long remained underinvestigated, in large part due to an absence of available data. The recent publication of a corpus of lower-class Scottish writing from the nineteenth century—the Corpus of Scottish Pauper Petitions, or ScotPP corpus, which includes pauper petitions written in a variety of Scottish parishes throughout the nineteenth century—offers new possibilities for research into lower-class linguistic developments. Making use of this corpus, the present thesis investigates the occurrence of anglicisation in lower-class written language. I compare the extent to which prescriptivism has affected the ScotPP pauper petitions with the writings of upper- and middle-class Scottish people during this period, drawing on materials the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW). By studying both overt and covert Scotticisms, drawing respectively on works by contemporaneous prescriptivists and works by modern linguists, an approach is taken that highlights not only the process of language change from above through standardisation, but also the from below aspect of developments and how they interact and co-occur with the prescriptivism of the era. In doing so, this thesis sheds light on the sociohistorical processes by which anglicisation spread through and affected the language of the nineteenth-century Scottish social classes.Show less
Stylistic research, though it is proven an effective tool in literary analysis, does not always extend its focus beyond the textual world of the researched data. This thesis aims to unite corpus...Show moreStylistic research, though it is proven an effective tool in literary analysis, does not always extend its focus beyond the textual world of the researched data. This thesis aims to unite corpus linguistic methods with the socio-historic topic of the prescriptivist language culture in Late Modern England, when words of either Germanic or Latinate origin carried pronounced social and gender-associated connotations. A multi-method approach of keyness and concordancing of Jane Austen’s repertoire explored her etymological distributional patterns, which appeared mostly Germanic. This was not wholly gender-related, as she used fewer Latinate keywords than the average female contemporary author. Considering her negative keywords were also predominantly Germanic, and taking into account that different characters had different etymological distributions based on their social standing, it was concluded that Austen was likely confident in both Germanic and Latinate vocabularies, and could exploit their respective social connotations to characterise her diction and that of her characters. From this could furthermore be concluded that Austen exhibited, unlike past assertions, a clearly individualised style.Show less
