The familiar letter in early modern English : a pragmatic approach / Susan M. Fitzmaurice.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fitzmaurice, Susan M.

Series:

Pragmatics & beyond ; new ser. 95.

Pragmatics & beyond, 0922-842X ; new ser. 95

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English letters--History and criticism.

English letters.

English prose literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Letter writing--History--16th century.

Letter writing.

Letter writing--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (271 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia, PA : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2002.

Summary:

This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.

Contents:

The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: The pragmatics of epistolary conversation

Chapter 2: Context and the linguistic construction of epistolary worlds

Chapter 3: Making and reading epistolary meaning

Chapter 4: Sociable letters, acts of advice and medical counsel

Chapter 5: Epistolary acts of seeking and dispensing patronage

Chapter 6: Intersubjectivity and the writing of the epistolary interlocutor

Chapter 7: Relevance and the consequences of unintended epistolary meanings

Concluding Note: Making meaning in letters: a lesson in reading

References

Index

Pragmatics and Beyond Series.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-252) and index.

ISBN:

9786612161865

9781282161863

1282161865

9789027297396

9027297398

OCLC:

70734302