“The reader is desired to observe…”

Abstract

The prefaces to English school grammars of the eighteenth century may be conceptualised as a frame of reference for the authorial voice behind them. To promote and boost the sales of their works, grammarians generally wrote sound, meaningful prefaces that combined propositional content with metadiscursive comments. Therefore, this kind of prefatory material falls within the scope of what Genette (1997: 1–2) calls the “paratextual apparatus” of a work, which aims to provide the reader with essential information for the correct reception, understanding and perusal of the book. This paper focuses on grammarians’ textual and interpersonal metacomments as thoughtful strategies to guide the reader carefully through the text, as well as to shape the contents and message of the book at various levels (Hyland 2000; Lorés-Sanz 2006: 92). To this end, a study corpus of fifteen English school grammars has been retrieved from the ECEG Database (2010) by restricting two search parameters: target audience and authors’ place of birth.

A critical discourse approach to Benjamin Martin’s preface to "An introduction to the English language and learning" (1754)

“…Studies such as the ones undertaken byRodríguez-Álvarez and Rodríguez-Gil (2013) andDomínguez- Rodríguez and Rodríguez-Álvarez (2015) have contributed to the characterisation of the prefatory texts of eighteenth-century grammars. Increasing attention to the study of the eighteenth-century can also be attested to by the availability of online resources, such as the Eighteenth-Century English Grammar (ECEG) database.…”