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
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
