Date: 02-Jul-2007 From: Paul Peranteau <paulbenjamins.com> Subject: Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues: Walker
Title: Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues
Subtitle: Trials, Depositions, and Drama Comedy
Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 158
Published: 2007
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Author: Terry Walker
Hardback: ISBN: 902725401X Pages: 365 Price: U.S. $ 132.00
Abstract:
This book is a corpus-based study examining 'thou' and 'you' in three speech-related genres from 1560-1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when 'you' became dominant to when 'thou' became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released 'A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760' and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of 'thou' and 'you'. Previous research on 'thou' and 'you' has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Text/Corpus Linguistics
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