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Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English: Literary and linguistic approaches
Edited by Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 312] 2020
► pp. 141–163

A medical debate of “heated pamphleteering” in the early eighteenth century

| University of Helsinki
This chapter probes into the controversy of smallpox inoculation that followed soon after the novel method was introduced into England and culminated in the second decade of the eighteenth century. Polemical argumentation displays verbal aggression, and irony and sarcasm take the upper hand in interpersonal language use that bursts into personal insults in a pamphlet that serves as data for the empirical part. The method of analysis is qualitative discourse analysis in a multi-layered contextual frame in accordance with the historical pragmatic approach. The analysis shows how transgressions of the prevailing norms are exploited and presents a far cry from the recommended Royal Society style of writing science as well as from the more rhetorical way of argumentation favoured in contemporary polite society; even an old pattern of scholastic argumentation is revived to poke fun at the target.
Keywords: polite society, argumentation, inoculation controversy, verbal aggression, insults, discourse analysis, sarcasm, styles of writing
Article outline
  • 1.Conflict discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
  • 2.Data, research questions and methods
  • 3.The pragmatic space of aggressive language use
  • 4.A brief history of smallpox literature
  • 5.Main protagonists and what they wrote
  • 6.Norms of medical writing in the eighteenth century
    • 6.1Norm 1: Royal Society “plain” style
    • 6.2Norm 2: Rhetorical eloquence
    • 6.3Norm 3: Scholastic argumentation with moral concerns
  • 7.Exploiting the norms with meaning reversals
    • 7.1Setting the scene
    • 7.2From general to personal accusations
    • 7.3Demeaning professional skills and experience
    • 7.4Language issues
    • 7.5Modification of a classical argumentation pattern
    • 7.6National feelings: Us versus them
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.312.07taa
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Taavitsainen, Irma
2021. Medical book reviews 1665–1800. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 22:2 ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo

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