Cover not available
Part of
Keeping in Touch: Emigrant letters across the English-speaking world
Edited by Raymond Hickey
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 10] 2019
► pp. 67–84

Chapter 4
Singular, plural, or collective?

Grammatical flexibility and the definition of identity in the correspondence of nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants

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.

Keywords: Late Modern English, Scotland, Scottish English, correspondence, vernacular usage, person deixis, pronominal forms, nineteenth century, transatlantic emigration, self-representation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.119CSC and beyond
    • 1.2Stance, attitude, and pragmatics
  • 2.Stance and pronouns
    • 2.1Me, myself, and I – not forgetting YOU
    • 2.2WE: inclusion and/or exclusion
    • 2.3Third parties: within the network and beyond
  • 3.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.10.04dos
References

Primary source

19CSC. Dossena, Marina and Richard Dury
compilers). In preparation. A corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence.

Secondary sources

Auer, Anita, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts
(eds.) 2015 Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Austin, Frances
([1973] 1998) Epistolary conventions in the Clift family correspondence. In Mats Rydén, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Merja Kytö (eds.), A Reader in Early Modern English, 319–347. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2004 “Heaving this importunity”: The survival of opening formulas in letters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historical Sociolingistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 4, [URL] (accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
Bax, Marcel and Dániel Z. Kádár
(eds.) 2011 Understanding Historical (Im)politeness. Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12(1–2).Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas
1995 Dimensions of Register Variation: A cross-linguistic comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Devine, Tom M.
2006 Clearance and Improvement: Land, power and people in Scotland, 1700–1900. Edinburgh: John Donald.Google Scholar
2011 To the Ends of the Earth, Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750–2010. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Dierks, Konstantin
2000 The familiar letter and social refinement in America, 1750-1800. In David Barton and Nigel Hall (eds.), Letter Writing as a Social Practice, 31–41. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dossena, Marina
2004 Towards a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence. Linguistica e Filologia 18. 195–214.Google Scholar
2007 “As this leaves me at present” – Formulaic usage, politeness and social proximity in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters. In Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Language Histories from Below (1700–2000), 13–29. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Many strange and peculiar affairs”: Description, narration and evaluation in Scottish emigrants’ letters of the nineteenth century. Scottish Language 27. 1–18.Google Scholar
2010 Dialect and vernacular features in Late Modern English correspondence: Beginnings of a quest. Brno Studies in English 36(1). 5–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012a The study of correspondence: Theoretical and methodological issues. In Dossena, Marina and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.), Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe, 13–30. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012b Sense and sensibility: Verbal morphosyntax in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters and the intersection of standard and vernacular usage. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics 1. 23–36.Google Scholar
2012c “I write you these few lines”: Metacommunication and pragmatics in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters. In Busse, Ulrich and Axel Hübler (eds.), Investigations into the Metacommunicative Lexicon of English. A contribution to historical pragmatics, 45–63. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Mixing genres and reinforcing community ties in nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence: Formality, familiarity and religious discourse. In Kopaczyk, Joanna and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Communities of Practice in the History of English, 47–60. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Tales of the New World: The linguistic construction of identity between psychological proximity and geographical distance. In Bamford, Julia, Franca Poppi and Davide Mazzi (eds.), Space, Place and the Discursive Construction of Identity, 239–264. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dossena, Marina and Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella
(eds.) 2012 Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dury, Richard
2006 A corpus of nineteenth-century business correspondence: Methodology of transcription. In Dossena, Marina and Susan M. Fitzmaurice (eds.), Business and Official Correspondence: Historical investigations, 193–205. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2008 Handwriting and the linguistic study of letters. In Dossena, Marina and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.), Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence: Methodology and data, 113–135. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Elspaß, Stephan
2002 Standard German in the nineteenth century? (Counter-)evidence from the private correspondence of ‘ordinary people’. In Linn, Andrew R. and Nicola McLelland (eds.), Standardization – Studies from the Germanic languages, 43–65. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Private letters as a source for an alternative history of Late Modern German. In Auer, Anita, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts (eds.), Letter Writing and Language Change, 35–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche
(eds.) 2007 Germanic Language Histories from Below (1700–2000). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erickson, Charlotte
1972 Invisible Immigrants. The adaptation of English and Scottish immigrants in nineteenth-century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fairman, Tony
2003 Letters of the English labouring classes 1800–34 and the English language. In Dossena, Marina and Charles Jones (eds.), Insights into Late Modern English, 265–282. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2007 ‘Lower-order’ letters, schooling and the English language, 1795 to 1834. In Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Language Histories from Below (1700–2000), 31–43. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Susan M.
2002 The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English: A pragmatic approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Epistolary identity: Convention and idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English letters. In Dossena, Marina and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.), Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence: Methodology and data, 77–112. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, David
1994 Oceans of Consolation: Personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gerber, David A.
2005 Acts of deceiving and withholding in immigrant letters: Personal identity and self-presentation in personal correspondence. Journal of Social History 39. 315–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 Authors of their Lives. The personal correspondence of British immigrants to North America in the nineteenth century. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
2011 American Immigration: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grant, Robert D.
2005 Representations of British Emigration, Colonisation and Settlement. Imagining empire, 1800–1860. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Harper, Marjory
2006 Crossing borders: Scottish emigration to Canada. History in Focus11 (Migration), [URL] (accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan
2011 Corpus Approaches to Evaluation: Phraseology and evaluative language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson
(eds.) 2001 Evaluation in Text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Bill
2005 Writing back: Welsh emigrants and their correspondence in the nineteenth century. North American Journal of Welsh Studies 5(1). 23–46.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen
(eds.) 2008 Speech Acts in the History of English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas
2007 Text types and the methodology of diachronic speech act analysis. In Fitzmaurice, Susan M. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Methods in Historical Pragmatics, 139–166. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Tracing directives through text and time: Towards a methodology of a corpus-based diachronic speech-act analysis. In Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Speech Acts in the History of English, 295–310. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, John M
2010 Scotland and Empire: Ethnicity, environment and identity. Northern Scotland 1. 12–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mäkinen, Martti
2006 Dissemination of textual material and second-generation corpora: Finding intertexts in early English medical writing. In Dossena, Marina and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Diachronic Perspectives on Domain-specific English, 191–205. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCafferty, Kevin and Carolina P. Amador-Moreno
2012 “I will be expecting a letter from you before this reaches you”. A corpus-based study of shall/will variation in Irish English correspondence. In Dossena, Marina and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.), Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe, 179–204. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley
1987 [1989] Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Linda C.
2012 Teaching grammar and composition through letter writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England”. In Dossena, Marina and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.), Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe, 229–250. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Introduction. In Mitchell, Linda C. (ed.) Forms of Address: Five hundred years of letters. Special issue of Huntington Library Quarterly 79(3). 343–344.Google Scholar
2016 “I never could forget my darling mother”. The language of recollection in a corpus of female Irish emigrant correspondence. The History of the Family 21(3). 315–336. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Greg
2003 Discourse studies of scientific popularization: Questioning the boundaries. Discourse Studies 5(2). 265–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen
(eds.) 2004 Letter Writing. Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Robin
2008 Lochaber no more – Landscape, emigration and the Scottish artist 1849–1895. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 7/1, [URL] (accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
Noonan, Alan J. M.
2011 “Oh those long months without a word from home”. Migrant letters from mining frontiers. The Boolean 2011 137–143, [URL] (accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
Oster, Ulrike
2010 Using corpus methodology for semantic and pragmatic analyses: What can corpora tell us about the linguistic expression of emotions? Cognitive Linguistics 21(4). 727–763. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna and Minna Nevala
(eds.) 2005 Letters and Letter Writing. Special issue of European Journal of English Studies.Google Scholar
Pipe, Ann
2004 Voices from the past: A reconstruction of the Scottish emigrant experience (1830–1856). International Review of Scottish Studies 29. 72–106.Google Scholar
Rayson, Paul
2008 From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13(4). 519–549. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2003 Lowth’s language. In Dossena, Marina and Charles Jones (eds.), Insights into Late Modern English, 241–264. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2005 Eighteenth-century English letters: In search of the vernacular. Linguistica e Filologia 21. 113–146.Google Scholar
Wal, van der Marijke
2007 Eighteenth-century linguistic variation from the perspective of a Dutch diary and a collection of private letters. In Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Language Histories from Below (1700–2000), 83–96. Berlin: De Gruyter).Google Scholar
White, Peter R. R.
2007 Appraisal. In Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics Online, s.v. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins [URL] (accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
2015 The Appraisal Website, [URL](accessed July 2019).Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Ávila-Ledesma, Nancy E.
2024. “I Thought you had Forgotten me”: A Corpus-Pragmatic Examination of the Mental Verb Think in Irish Emigrants’ Letters. Corpus Pragmatics 8:1 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.