A University of Sussex MPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details A Stylistic Analysis of the Pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English Dialogues submitted by Maggie Kerridge for the award of Master of Philosophy in Linguistics from the University of Sussex April 2013 University of Sussex Master of Philosophy in Linguistics A Stylistic Analysis of the Pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English Dialogues Primary Source: A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (2005) Compiled by Merja Kytö (Uppsala University, Sweden) & Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University, England) I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or part to another university for the award of any other degree A Stylistic Analysis of the Pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English Dialogues Abstract This study investigates the changing pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English dialogues. It considers the contexts in which thou and you are used with singular reference, analyses in detail the motivation for shifts from one form to the other within an exchange and how the use of the forms thou and you collocates with address terms and epithets in a broad range of constructed and authentic texts. The study is data-driven. Texts in the Corpus of English Dialogues featuring inflected forms of thou are identified and the unmarked usage of the speaker to the addressee is established by a close reading of these texts. Motivation for switches to marked usage of thou and singular you is assessed from the context. Address terms and affective epithets collocating with thou and singular you are noted to trace diachronic usage. A comparison is made between usage in drama and non-drama texts. The findings show that thou-usage connotes affect not only in Shakespearean drama, as has previously been proposed, but also in a wide range of texts throughout the period studied. The study presents a new pragmaphilological model with a finding that the process of pronoun switching frequently acts as a pragmatic marker. The study establishes that features influencing change of use are speaker’s change of topic, speaker’s change of stance on the topic and speaker’s change of perception of the persona of the addressee. In comparison with you, thou is used as an address term with diminishing frequency throughout the whole period. It is used more frequently in collocation with affective epithets than with address terms. It continues in use with an affective function in drama texts until the end of the period. The switching of address pronouns is motivated. The pragmatics of thou is understood through its switching behaviour with you. Contents Chapter 1 Aims & Objectives 1 Concepts & Terminology 3 Deixis 3 Markedness 3 Markedness Shift 4 Grammaticalisation, Subjectification & Pragmaticalisation 10 Pragmatic Markers 14 Deixis & Affect 19 Evaluation of Connotation & Expression of Affect 20 Diachronic Paradigms of Second Person Personal Pronouns 22 Chapter 2 Review of Previous Studies 23 Brown & Gilman – Power and Solidarity semantic 26 Paston Letters 27 Shakespeare Corpus 29 Linguistic & Extra Linguistic Motivation 29 Personal Preference 36 Politeness Theory 42 Significance of Context 45 Chivalric and Exalted Register 48 Address Terms and Epithets 50 Witness Depositions 51 Corpus of English Dialogues 52 Seventeenth Century Drama & Prose Fiction 53 Pronoun Switching 54 Pronoun Switching in other languages 56 Chapter 3 Data & Methodology 59 Text Types 60 Authentic Dialogue 60 Trial Proceedings 60 Witness Depositions 61 Reliability of Data 61 The Discourse Structure of Court Texts 64 Constructed Dialogue 67 Drama Comedy 67 The Discourse Structure of Drama 67 Didactic Works 68 Language Teaching Handbooks 68 Miscellaneous Texts 68 Methodology 68 Pragmaphilological Model 69 Unmarked Usage 69 Markedness & Markedness Reversal 71 Correlation of Address Terms and Epithets with thou/you 72 Classification of Rank 73 Determination of Affect 78 Chapter 4 Data Analysis of Authentic Texts 8 1 Depositions 81 Categories for use of single thou/you 81 Usage as a reflection of social status 81 Unequal Exchange Older to Younger Generation 87 Young Speaker to Older Addressee 90 Discrepancy in Reporting 91 Formulaic use of thou 95 Dialogue with Spirits 98 Subversion of Social Order 100 Terms of Negative Affect 102 Terms of Positive Affect 107 Connotation of Titles in Collocation with thou/you 108 Markedness & Markedness Reversal 111 Trials 114 Address Forms & Epithets 117 Effect of semantic change on interpretation of affect 120 Expression of Affect 124 Discussion of Results for Deposition & Trial Texts 126 Chapter 5 Data Analysis of Drama Comedies 132 Drama Texts Discussion of Results for Drama Texts 249 Chapter 6 Analysis of Didactic, Language & Miscellaneous 258 Texts Didactic Texts Discussion of Results for Didactic Texts 293 Language Teaching Texts 295 Discussion of Results for Language Teaching Texts 308 Miscellaneous Texts 310 Discussion of Results for Miscellaneous Texts 322 Chapter 7 Collocation of the forms thou and you with address terms and epithets 324 Address Terms 324 Collocation with thou 330 Non-Predictability of Collocation 332 With Abusive Epithets 332 With Apostrophe & Personification 333 Chapter 8 Conclusions 334 First Objective 334 Second Objective 340 Third Objective 346 Findings 346 References 348 Appendices Appendix 1 Affinity: Temporary Solidarity of Purpose 358 Appendix 2 Comparison of collocation of thou/you with selected Epithets 361 Appendix 3 Comparison of collocation of thou/you with Apostrophe & Personification 363 Appendix 4 Data Analysis Tables A1 Depositions 373 A2 Trials 381 A3 Drama 394 A4 Didactic Works 406 A5 Language Teaching 416 A6 Miscellaneous 425 1 A Stylistic Analysis of the Pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English Dialogues Chapter 1 Aims & Objectives This is a qualitative and quantitative study investigating the changing pragmatics of thou in Early Modern English dialogues. It considers the contexts in which thou and you were used with singular reference, analyses the motivation for shifts from one form to the other within an exchange and analyses how the use of the forms thou and you collocates with address terms and epithets in a range of constructed and authentic texts. In Old English thou was the second person singular personal pronoun in the nominative case and ye was the plural form. The use of the plural form in singular contexts developed in the Middle English period probably initially in formal contexts (Hogg 2002:20). This usage probably came into English via Latin and French texts written in twelfth-century England (Johnson 1966:261). Horobin & Smith suggest that by the Middle English period, ‘thou was not only singular but also intimate and ye was regarded as more formal as well as plural’ with the distinction being ‘roughly comparable with the tu/vous distinction in present day French’ (2002:112). Analyses of contemporary texts, however, have shown that the distinction is more subtle than intimacy and formality with ye/you being: ‘not so much ‘polite’ as ‘not impolite’; it is not so much ‘formal’ as ‘not informal’ (Quirk 1986:7). By the end of the Early Modern English period Lowth considers that ‘thou in the polite, and even in the familiar style is disused, and the plural you is employed instead of it,’ with thou being restricted to ‘the serious and solemn style,’ that is, the register of poetry and sermons ([1762]1799:vi). Ulrich Busse, author of a comprehensive study of thou/you variation in the Shakespeare corpus, suggests: If two linguistic forms in a specific language co-occur at a given time it is from the point of view of economy in language very likely that they are not semantically identical – at least in their connotations, or since we deal with a set of closed-class elements that acquire meaning through their capacity of anaphoric reference, or their pragmatic value, we may assume that they are 2 neither in free variation nor in complementary distribution ... but that there is a certain overlap in function in that they should not be viewed as if in a clear-cut binary division but as if on a sliding scale. (2002:8) In order to investigate the changing significance of the second person pronoun in Early Modern English, I have analysed the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760,1 a computerized corpus of constructed and authentic dialogues compiled by Merja Kytö of Uppsala University and Jonathan Culpeper of Lancaster University. The analysis adopts a diachronic form-to-function model in which the pertinent question is, according to Fitzmaurice & Taavitsainen (2007:15): ‘What are the constraints on ways in which meaning can change while form remains constant?’ Therefore, one of my objectives is: to discover the contexts in which the forms thou and you were used with singular reference. My second objective is: to determine the motivation for shifts from one form to the other within an exchange or within a single utterance. My aim is to make my study data-driven rather than hypothesis-driven. Rather than considering features that had already been proposed as potential determinants in the selection of thou/you, my approach is to identify the phenomenon of switching from one form to another with singular reference and then to assess possible causes. In this way, I hope to answer the Fish criticism of stylistic analysis (1979:129): that it ‘was always arbitrary, less a matter of something demonstrated than of something assumed before the fact or imposed after it.’ Fish asserts that ‘the goal of stylistics – an objective account of form and meaning – is an impossible one’.