Abstract
In this article, we study the way in which prostitutes, on the one hand, and prostitution, on the other, were evaluated and represented in nineteenth-century English news articles. The main aims of the study are to chart referential terms used of prostitutes as socially marginal agents and objects, as well as to map concepts related to the metaphorical field of prostitution. Our data come from the 19th Century British Library Newspapers Database (British Library newspapers parts 1 and 2: 1800–1900. http://www.gale.com/c/british-library-newspapers-part-i) and The Times Digital Archive (1785–2011. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-digital-archive), consisting of altogether 300 news articles relating to prostitution. Our results suggest that there is variation between vilification and pity in the language relating to prostitutes in the Victorian press, both from the socio-pragmatic and the cognitive perspectives. While the overall attitudes are mostly negative, there is a tendency to highlight the humanity of the prostitute by referring to her, for example, as a pitiful object of a crime. All the metaphors found in the material also draw from the negativity seen as inherent in prostitution and prostitutes. This is accentuated by the frequent personification of states or political institutions as prostitutes, whose lamentable behaviour or appearance is referred to in the metaphor.
References
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The Times digital archive, 1785–2011. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-digital-archive (accessed 20 October 2016).Search in Google Scholar
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Linguistic representations of the social margins in Early and Late Modern English
- “He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers
- Referential NPs as subtle expressions of attitude in infanticide trials, 1674–1775
- The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – a corpus based view
- Representations of prostitutes and prostitution as a metaphor in nineteenth-century English newspapers
- The language of “Ribbonmen”: A CDA approach to identity construction in nineteenth-century Irish English threatening notices
- People as property: Representations of slaves in early American newspaper advertisements
- Book Reviews
- Russi, Cinzia: Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics
- Early Germanic Languages in Contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27):
- Bunčić Daniel:Biscriptality. A sociolinguistic typology
- Walsh, Olivia: Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec
- Letras del desierto. Edición de un corpus epistolar para su estudio lingüístico. Región de Tarapacá, Chile:
- Historische Mündlichkeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte der gesprochenen Sprache (Kieler Forschungen zur Sprachwissenschaft 7):
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Linguistic representations of the social margins in Early and Late Modern English
- “He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers
- Referential NPs as subtle expressions of attitude in infanticide trials, 1674–1775
- The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – a corpus based view
- Representations of prostitutes and prostitution as a metaphor in nineteenth-century English newspapers
- The language of “Ribbonmen”: A CDA approach to identity construction in nineteenth-century Irish English threatening notices
- People as property: Representations of slaves in early American newspaper advertisements
- Book Reviews
- Russi, Cinzia: Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics
- Early Germanic Languages in Contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27):
- Bunčić Daniel:Biscriptality. A sociolinguistic typology
- Walsh, Olivia: Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec
- Letras del desierto. Edición de un corpus epistolar para su estudio lingüístico. Región de Tarapacá, Chile:
- Historische Mündlichkeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte der gesprochenen Sprache (Kieler Forschungen zur Sprachwissenschaft 7):