Text in context
A critical discour analysis approach
电话聊天
to Margaret Paston*
Johanna L.Wood
University of Aarhus
This paper analys lexical features in letters written to and by Margaret
degreesPaston,using Fairclough’s(1992)three-dimensional framework for dis-
cour analysis.Historical pragmatics,as a relatively newfield,is open to the
development of new methodologies and the adaptation of established ones.
Although Fairclough’s methodology is intended as a systematic way of ap-
proaching modern text,it is shown to be relevant and uful in historical
work.The letters are analyd in context,with reference to the discursive
practices(production,distribution,and consumption of text)and social
practices of thefifteenth century.The analysis shows that Margaret occupies
a powerful position within her family and the community.
1.Introduction
As historical pragmatics is a comparatively newfield in linguistics,new method-ologies are still being developed and approaches that werefirst advanced for prent-day data are being adapted.This paper has a dual purpo:to investi-gate whether Fairclough’s(1992)approach to critical discour analysis may be adapted for u in a historical context,and to analy the form and content of Margaret Mautby Paston’sfifteenth-century letters.With Margaret,the investigation revolves around issues of her identity and power as a woman in thefifteenth century,evidenced by the language of her letters.The concern with methodology aris from an attempt to be systematic and unbiad in analysing the data and to situate the data within the context offifteenth-century England.
The choice to approach the data using a method developed for critical discour analysis is intended
to complement other recent work in historical pragmatics that adapts established frameworks to the analysis of historical data Journal of Historical Pragmatics5:2(2004),229–254.
issn1566–5852/e-issn1569–9854 ©John Benjamins Publishing Company
230Johanna L.Wood
from letters.Notable for the application of Brown and Levinson’s(1987) politeness theory to forms of address in English letters is the work of Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg(1995)and Raumolin-Brunberg(1996).More recently, Bergs(2000)us the theoretical framework of social network theory(Milroy 1987)in his approach to the Paston letters.Although Bax’s(2001)data are from plays,not letters,his u of frame analysis(Goffman1974)might also be just as applicable to letters since conversations are“played out”in letters;as Fitzmaurice (2002:1)comments,the letter“reprents an exchange between actors”.
As for the data itlf,the correspondence of the Paston family is one of the earliest personal letter collections written in English and its u as a source of socio-historical data has long been recognized.However,personal letters also provide particularly interesting and uful material for linguists.Letters are part of a dialogue,or a conversation,and interactions between writers and reader
s develop and build.As Fitzmaurice points out,the letter is a text that both responds to previous texts and anticipates new texts.In addition,as studies of text type and register reveal,personal letters are often more informal and reprent an“oral and“involved”Biber1988,1995).Conquently, the writers’attitudes,feelings and emotions are likely to be grammatically and lexically Biber and Finegan1989;Meurman-Solin1997).Howev-er,there are limits to the informality in letters that are impod by the conven-tions of the genre,and freedom of personal expression is constrained by the form.As Watt(1993:122)comments,the letter can be“on one hand conventi-onalid and influenced by the writer’s culture and on the other an expression of the writer’s individuality and immediate personal experiences”.Therefore,in studying Margaret Paston,it is esntial tofirst establish what is conventional infifteenth-century letters in order to e whether and how she departs from the conventional.That is,the investigation has to be undertaken in context,and the u of Fairclough’s(1992)method is an attempt to establish that context.
Fairclough’s model was chon for veral reasons.First,the model gives a systematic methodology for analysing text in context.The method is three-dimensional and aims to take into account the discursive practices and social practices of the community in which the text is produced and consumed.As mentioned above,letters are conventionalid and their form is constrained by the disc
ursive practices of the time and often influenced by style guides.But the form can be shaped by social practice,and discursive and social practices are sometimes interdependent.(See below for an example which shows the effect that the end of the feudal system had on the form of letters).A cond reason for using this method is that I am interested in issues of power,in particular how Margaret constructs and establishes a position for herlf within her family and within the community.Fairclough is concerned with incorporating issues of power into his model on a macro scale since,as he says,“Hegemonies within particular organisations and institutions and at a societal level are produced,
hostmasterText in context231 reproduced,contested and transformed in discour”(1992:10).Although this paper is concerned with Margaret Paston,who is to be viewed as an individual (even if she may have been reprentative of women of her time and social status),and not a reprentative of an organisation or institution,similar conditions apply.For example,Fairclough’s focus in this area is on intertext-uality,particularly on identifying which prior texts are drawn upon,both overtly and indirectly,and how they are reprented in the discour.Letters,as mentioned above,are a“natural”for intertextuality,at least overtly,as they respond to prior texts both written and spoken.Afinal reason for using this method is that it is intended to be a method for historical analysis
and for change.Again,this is applicable to historical as well as modern discours.A prent-day analysis of discour within this model would aim to rai people’s awareness about their own ideologies and tho around them so that they then could actively strive to change them if need be.However,if the model is robust,高一英语必修一知识点
it should also enable one to look back in time to e whether there has been,in
the past,a relationship between changing discours and social change.There-fore,although the model was developed for prent-day discours,there are veral reasons why it might be applicable in an historical context.Thefirst question,then,is whether this is a uful way for systematically approaching historical data in letters.This question will be addresd by applying the three-dimensional analysis to Margaret Paston’s letters.艾米 怀恩豪斯
The cond,more specific question relates to Margaret and has as its starting point the following obrvation:“Images and descriptions of the late medieval female are numerous in literary and religious texts,but all too often depict women as either weak,and dangerously distracting,like Eve,or divinely virtuous,blameless creatures,like the Virgin Mary”(Truelove2001:42).My general impression from reading about Margaret is that she plays an active,even central,role in her family and in the co
mmunity.That subjective notion will be tested by drawing on linguistic data to discover what the language in Margaret Paston’s letters reveals about her role as afifteenth-century woman.The cond question,then,put very simply,is whether Margaret Paston rembles Eve,the Virgin Mary,neither,or both.
The outline is as follows.Section2introduces Margaret and the Paston letter collection.Section3ts out Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and considers two of the three dimensions in the model,social practice and discur-sive practice,in afifteenth-century tting.The ction concludes with an explanation of how this approach relates to and leads to the third dimension, namely,clo textual analysis.Section4is a clo textual analysis of i)address and salutation terms and ii)the vocabulary of naming.The were chon after consideration of the other two dimensions in Section3.Finally,in Section5,I draw conclusions both about Margaret and about the ufulness of the model.
232Johanna L.Wood
2.Data
Margaret Mautby Paston was born c.1422and died in1484.She married John Paston I,probably arou
nd1440,and between1442and1459gave birth to ven children.In the Paston letter collection,107letters are attributed to her, spanning37years.The letters are part of a collection of1000documents pertaining to the Paston family that were stored in an attic and discovered after the death of the last surviving Paston in1732.The Paston documents from the fifteenth century sparked considerable interest when the collection was discov-ered and they werefirst edited in the eighteenth century.The collection is particularly interesting becau three generations of the family are reprented, providing an opportunity to study language change in one family.For example, John III,in the third generation,is thefirst Paston to u only postverbal negation while his older brother,father,and mother all u the older form of preverbal ne(Wood1997).See also Bergs(in prep.)for detailed discussions of intra-and intergenerational morphosyntactic changes in the language of the Pastons.It is also interesting to note that thefifteenth-century letters are from before and after the introduction of the printing press in England.The prent study us the most recent edition of the letters,Davis(1971),Volume1, available in electronic format.Most of the analysis is of the letters Margaret wrote to her husband and sons:68letters to her husband,John I,20letters to her eldest son,John II,and eleven letters to her cond son,John III.Section4.2us the letters Margaret’s husband and sons wrote to her as well as hers to them.
One methodological factor that has to be taken into account with Marga-ret’s letters is that she almost certainly could not write.None of the letters were written in her hand,and29different hands make up the letter collection attributed to her.Many of the scribes have been identified,as other docu-ments by them survive.It was not unusual for people in the Paston circles to employ cretaries.Although her husband,John,could write,and letters in his own hand survive,many of his letters are written by others.The u of scribes alone is not evidence of inability to write.However,the men usually signed letters written by others and so did Margaret’s daughter-in-law,Margery.The abnce of even a signature by Margaret and the multiplicity of hands over such
a large span of years in the letters attributed to her,leads Davis(1971:xxxvii)to
出国留学英语口语the conclusion that she could not write and called on whichever literate person was available at the time.If this was the ca,the issue becomes whether she dictated the letters verbatim or gave instructions to a clerk who then went away to draft a letter.This is still an open question.Davis(xxxviii)mentions the evidence from corrected mistakes which appear to have arin through mishear-ing or miscopying but are not mistakes that someone composing as they wrote would make.There is room for more work here.Bergs(in prep.)compares certain letters that the same scribe wrote for different family members andfinds
Text in context233 sufficient differences to lead him to suggest that the family members and not
the scribe are responsible for the morphosyntactic variation.As I will show, even with the formulaic openings of the letters there is evidence that Margaret was partly responsible for the wording.
溏心风暴主题曲In Section3below,the model is explained and systematically followed in order to place the textual analysis in the context of thefifteenth century.
3.Fairclough’s three-dimensional model
Fairclough advocates that clo textual analysis should be undertaken with reference to the discursive practices and the social practices of the communities
in which the text is produced and consumed.In outlining his method,he emphasizes that text analysis should not be done in isolation and in his model床单 英文
he attempts to bring together three analytical traditions:“the tradition of clo textual and linguistic analysis within linguistics,the macrosociological tradition
fm transmitter
of analysing social practice in relation to social structures,and the interpretivist
or microsociological tradition as eing social practice as something people actively produce and make n of on the basis of shared commonn procedures”(1992:72).The analysis should be an integrated undertaking consisting of the description of texts and their interpretation.The model is reprented in Figure1below.
TEXT
(vocabulary,grammar,cohesion,text structure,
speech acts,intertextuality,coherence)
DISCURSIVE PRACTICE
(production,distribution,consumption)
SOCIAL PRACTICE
(Most significant fifteenth-century domains:social status,religion,
and gender)
Figure1. Three-dimensional conception of discour adapted from Fairclough (1992:73).
reflect是什么意思The model reprents the concept that a piece of text is simultaneously a social and a discursive act and that there is a dynamic and reciprocal relationship among the three.In this initial investigation,the method will be ud in a
