New Book: Fitzmaurice

[Paul Peranteau]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
A  new work of potential interest to historical linguists from John
Benjamins Publishing:

Title: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English
Subtitle: A pragmatic approach
Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series

Publication Year: 2002

Publisher: John Benjamins
            http://www.benjamins.com/

Author: Susan M. Fitzmaurice

Hardback: Pages: viii, 263 pp.
ISBN: 1588111865,  Price: USD 90.00 (US & Canada)
ISBN: 9027251150,  Price: EUR 100.00 (Rest of world)


Abstract:

This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the
meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the
book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part
seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how
modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities
in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand
one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for
their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the
application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis,
politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of
historical, literary and fictional letters from extended
correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated
account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a
close reading affords.

This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the
English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well
as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
The pragmatics of epistolary conversation
Context and the linguistic construction of epistolary worlds
Making and reading epistolary meaning
Sociable letters, acts of advice and medical counsel
Epistolary acts of seeking and dispensing patronage
Intersubjectivity and the writing of the epistolary interlocutor
Relevance and the consequences of unintended epistolary meaning
Making meaning in letters: a lesson in reading
References
Index

Subject Language(s): English (Language Code: ENG)

Written In: English (Language Code: English)







Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com)
P O Box 27519                   Ph: 215 836-1200
Philadelphia PA 19118-0519      Fax: 215 836-1204
John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com