George Ridpath’s use of evaluative adjectives as manipulative and persuasive strategies during the War of the Spanish Succession (1710-1713)

Abstract

This paper analyses evaluative adjectives in George Ridpath’s political writings during the War of the Spanish Succession (1710-1713), in a corpus which comprises two journals, four years and 291 numbers, with the purpose of examining how this author used language as a weapon to shape and manipulate Great Britain’s public opinion during the Stuart period. For that, I have employed Wilson’s approach to Political Discourse Analysis (2001) and van Dijk’s polarisation (1999) as well as Allan and Burridge’s understanding of euphemism and dysphemism (1991). The results permit to value Ridpath’s contribution as a very influential but controversial pamphleteer who wrote about the War of the Spanish Succession within Great Britain’s context.