The Linguistic Study of Early Modern English Speech-Related Texts

Abstract

The historical linguist has to rely on written records of a speech event for evidence regarding spoken interaction of the past. The authors consider records of trial proceedings and witness depositions, two genres that are included in A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (currently under compilation). They present evidence both for and against the reliability of these written records as representations of past speech. The role of the scribe, as well as the printer and editor, is discussed. The authors also offer evidence to suggest that records that are contemporaneous with the speech event are preferable to later printings and editions for linguistic research. They conclude that the study of speech-related texts is of value in its own right, although these texts cannot be equated with present-day audio recordings of spoken interaction.Texts purporting to record spoken dialogue are especially important for the historical linguist as they give access to perhaps the closest thing we have to authentic interaction between speakers from a cross section of society in the days before audio recordings. Among these speech-related texts are trial proceedings presented in dialogue format and witness depositions-which are the focus of this study-as well as trial reports and minutes (which sometimes include language presented as dialogue), parliamentary debates, church council proceedings, and the like. We now have access to such texts in English, dating mainly from the sixteenth century onwards, in formats ranging from manuscripts, early imprints, later imprints, reprints, facsimiles, and text editions. The problems of working on historical linguistic data are well known to us, but additional complicating factors must be taken into AUTHORS' NOTE: We would like to thank Anne Curzan, Jonathan Culpeper, Peter Grund, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the draft version of this article.

Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch

“…Other, and perhaps more closely speech-related, sources of linguistic data on historical speech beyond the scope of this manuscript are those that reference actual speech in the form of official and court transcriptions, witness depositions, prose fiction, etc. (see Kytö and Walker 2003;Culpeper and Kytö 2010 for additional sources).…”

Meta-Communicative Expressions and Situational Variation of Stance Marking: I say and I tell (you) in Early Modern English Dialogues

“…Table 4 provides an overview of these parameters. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that drama comedy texts are fictional and thus contain constructed dialogue, whereas trial proceedings contain authentic dialogue that was transcribed by a scribe (for a detailed discussion, see Kytö and Walker 2003;Walker 2007: 14-17). In addition, the two settings differ considerably with respect to participant constellation and formality.…”

Periphrastic do in English Witness Depositions 1560– 1760

“…To begin with, the use of do-periphrasis tends to vary according to genre (Nurmi 2000). Furthermore, purportedly recording witnesses' oral testimonies, depositions are 'speech-related' and thus contain certain linguistic and structural characteristics that set them apart from literary genres, as well as from other 'authentic' speech-related genres such as trials (Kytö and Walker 2003). There are two types of court represented in depositions, and I will look at whether this extra-linguistic factor plays a role.…”