Beyond speech representation

Abstract

This article is concerned with “speech descriptors”, markers that describe or evaluate the nature of represented speech, such as very modestly in “The Gentlewoman very modestly bade him welcome” (CED, D2FKIT). The form, frequency and function of such features are charted in Early Modern English prose fiction, drawn from A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760, and the results are compared to those of Grund (2017a), which considers speech descriptors in contemporaneous witness depositions. The comparison reveals generic differences and points to the importance of studying speech descriptors for our understanding of the dynamics of speech representation in the history of English.

Disgusting, obscene and aggravating language: speech descriptors and the sociopragmatic evaluation of speech in theOld Bailey Corpus

“…Specifically, I explore how speech reporters (whether witnesses, the scribes taking down the records, court officials or others) evaluate, frame and position the speech that they represent in the court records in the Old Bailey Corpus , which covers the late Early Modern English and especially the Late Modern English periods (1720–1913). In this article (as part of a broader interest and project), I investigate speech descriptors (Grund 2017, 2018), which are metalinguistic features of the kind seen in (1) and (2). It was said exultingly (t18210411-64) 2 he used most disgusting language (t18460706-1443) …”

“…The lack of focused scholarly attention to speech descriptors does not accurately reflect the important work they perform in speech representation. Indeed, they are not infrequent and have various social and pragmatic functions (Grund 2017, 2018, 2020a,b). Examples (3) and (4) provide illustrations of prototypical speech descriptors.…”