Publication: Style-Shifting and Accommodative Competence in Late Middle English Written Correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the Test of Time
Authors
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. ; García-Vidal, Tamara
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Publisher
De Gruyter
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1515/flih-2018-0014
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
©2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
This document is the accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1515/flih-2018-0014
Abstract
Style constitutes an essential component for the non-referential indexicality of speakers’
sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication. Historical Sociolinguistics
applies tenets and findings of present-day research to the interpretation of linguistic
material from the past, but without giving intra-speaker variation the same relevance as
to inter-speaker variation. The aim of this paper is to show results obtained from the
investigation of style-shifting processes in late Medieval England by applying
contemporary models of diaphasic variation of Audience Design to historical corpora of
written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the use of the
orthographic variable (TH) by male members of the Paston family from the Paston Letters
corpus when addressing recipients from different social ranks. The data show addressee
and referee-based accommodation patterns in the communicative practice of Medieval
individuals. In addition to tracing language variation and change in speech communities,
private letters may also shed light onto the motivations and mechanisms for intra-speaker
variation in individuals and their stylistic choices in past societies.
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Citation
Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, 52(s39-s2), 383-420
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