John Benjamins Publishing Company
Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective?
Abstract
Emigrants’ letters have finally become the object of linguistic investigation since language historians have joined historians in their study of correspondence as a valuable research tool. In historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics, in particular, letters have proved useful in studies of interaction strategies meant to convey greater or lesser distance from other participants in the exchange. In this contribution I intend to further my analysis of such strategies in a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters, currently in preparation at the University of Bergamo, Italy; the aim is to study how the use of personal pronouns may vary depending on the topics at hand and the author’s attitude towards them. After an overview of the material currently available, my contribution will follow an integrated approach in which basic quantitative findings provide preliminary data; this will be supplemented with an outline of what pragmatic moves appear to be most prominent, in order to define how morphosyntactic patterns are used in different communicative contexts with different illocutionary aims. To that end, both close readings of the documents and qualitative analyses are shown to be indispensable.
Abstract
Emigrants’ letters have finally become the object of linguistic investigation since language historians have joined historians in their study of correspondence as a valuable research tool. In historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics, in particular, letters have proved useful in studies of interaction strategies meant to convey greater or lesser distance from other participants in the exchange. In this contribution I intend to further my analysis of such strategies in a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters, currently in preparation at the University of Bergamo, Italy; the aim is to study how the use of personal pronouns may vary depending on the topics at hand and the author’s attitude towards them. After an overview of the material currently available, my contribution will follow an integrated approach in which basic quantitative findings provide preliminary data; this will be supplemented with an outline of what pragmatic moves appear to be most prominent, in order to define how morphosyntactic patterns are used in different communicative contexts with different illocutionary aims. To that end, both close readings of the documents and qualitative analyses are shown to be indispensable.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Mining emigrant correspondence for linguistic insights 1
-
Part I. The language of emigrant correspondence
- Chapter 2. Wisconsin immigrant letters 27
- Chapter 3. ‘I hope you will excuse my bad writing’ 43
- Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective? 67
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Part II. The language of the Irish emigrant experience
- Chapter 5. Homesickness, recollections and reunions 87
- Chapter 6. ‘I have not time to say more at present’ 119
- Chapter 7. ‘Matt & Mrs Connor is with me now. They are only beginning to learn the work of the camp’ 139
- Chapter 8. Grammatical variation in nineteenth-century Irish Australian letters 163
- Chapter 9. ‘[S]eas may divide and oceans roll between but Friends is Friends whatever intervene’ 185
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Part III. Vernacular correspondence
- Chapter 10. ‘[T]his is all answer soon’ 213
- Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic features in earlier African American English 239
- Chapter 12. Memoirs from Central America 261
- Index 287
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Mining emigrant correspondence for linguistic insights 1
-
Part I. The language of emigrant correspondence
- Chapter 2. Wisconsin immigrant letters 27
- Chapter 3. ‘I hope you will excuse my bad writing’ 43
- Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective? 67
-
Part II. The language of the Irish emigrant experience
- Chapter 5. Homesickness, recollections and reunions 87
- Chapter 6. ‘I have not time to say more at present’ 119
- Chapter 7. ‘Matt & Mrs Connor is with me now. They are only beginning to learn the work of the camp’ 139
- Chapter 8. Grammatical variation in nineteenth-century Irish Australian letters 163
- Chapter 9. ‘[S]eas may divide and oceans roll between but Friends is Friends whatever intervene’ 185
-
Part III. Vernacular correspondence
- Chapter 10. ‘[T]his is all answer soon’ 213
- Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic features in earlier African American English 239
- Chapter 12. Memoirs from Central America 261
- Index 287
