A historical-pragmatic study of 17th century English accounts of events

Abstract

This study aims at tracing the sender’s linguistic imprint in six accounts of events written in English in the 17th century. These documents have barely been examined from a linguistic perspective, which justifies the need of the current research in order to shed more light on the study of the History of the English language, in accordance with the principles of Sociopragmatics. The sender of these documents will be seen in the text through the use of evaluative nouns and adjectives, which can sometimes be an evidence of a certain orality, intended or not, which could represent a defining feature of the accounts of events. The present analysis does not only look forward to contributing to a better knowledge of these documents that have fallen into oblivion, but it also seeks to achieve a better sociohistorical understanding of England in the 17th century.