“All the rest ye must lade yourself”
-
Arja Nurmi
Abstract
The negotiation of power and social distance in personal correspondence can be expressed e.g. through deontic modality. By estimating the relative power of writer-recipient dyads and recreating their social network to estimate social distance, this paper attempts to create ways in which to study this phenomenon in more detail. The modal auxiliaries of obligation, must and should, expressing strong and medium strong deontic meanings, are used as a test case in the correspondence of sixteenth-century English wool merchants.
Abstract
The negotiation of power and social distance in personal correspondence can be expressed e.g. through deontic modality. By estimating the relative power of writer-recipient dyads and recreating their social network to estimate social distance, this paper attempts to create ways in which to study this phenomenon in more detail. The modal auxiliaries of obligation, must and should, expressing strong and medium strong deontic meanings, are used as a test case in the correspondence of sixteenth-century English wool merchants.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface & Acknowledgements vii
- Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective 1
- A lady-in-waiting’s begging letter to her former employer (Paris, mid-sixteenth century) 19
- Epistolary formulae and writing experience in Dutch letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 45
- From ul to U.E. 67
- Flat adverbs and Jane Austen’s letters 91
- Letters from Gaston B. 107
- Written documents 129
- The rhetoric of autobiography in the seventeenth century 149
- “All the rest ye must lade yourself” 165
- Cordials and sharp satyrs 183
- Self-reference and ego involvement in the 1820 Settler petition as a leaking genre 201
- Ego-documents in Lithuanian 225
- The language of slaves on the island of St Helena, South Atlantic, 1682–1724 243
- Index 277
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface & Acknowledgements vii
- Ego-documents in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective 1
- A lady-in-waiting’s begging letter to her former employer (Paris, mid-sixteenth century) 19
- Epistolary formulae and writing experience in Dutch letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 45
- From ul to U.E. 67
- Flat adverbs and Jane Austen’s letters 91
- Letters from Gaston B. 107
- Written documents 129
- The rhetoric of autobiography in the seventeenth century 149
- “All the rest ye must lade yourself” 165
- Cordials and sharp satyrs 183
- Self-reference and ego involvement in the 1820 Settler petition as a leaking genre 201
- Ego-documents in Lithuanian 225
- The language of slaves on the island of St Helena, South Atlantic, 1682–1724 243
- Index 277
