Abstract
The article proposes a pragmatic-stylistic analysis of modality and ideology in Abiezer Coppes Coppes Return to the Wayes of Truth(1651), a dramatic recantation written in prison by one of the most (in-)famous radical thinkers of England during the Interregnum. As the analysis will try to show, the peculiar features of this text and its complex communicative strategies call for a wider variety of methodological tools, complementing the application of code-driven models for the analysis of modality with more use-driven pragmatic and stylistic frameworks. In Coppes text, textual and contextual elements are as fundamental as code and grammatical aspects to convey evaluation, and they trigger a very sly conflict between overt and covert meanings, producing interstitial, ironical, even subversive reading possibilities, thus demonstrating how modality is inextricably tied to a variety of linguistic devices to produce a multifaceted message.
Highlights
After a cursory biographical sketch to provide the necessary contextual elements to the texts, I will propose a stylistic analysis of the text (Coppe has been widely studied by literary critics and historians but, to my knowledge, not from a linguistic perspective) to demonstrate how an “extended” pragmatic and stylistic approach can shed light on the author‟s underlying attitude and ideological positioning
In confirm this aporia (CR), Coppe‟s writing style is very idiosyncratic and personal, featuring what McDowell [27] describes as an “intricate parody of the linguistic and typological forms of orthodoxy” (213), with an instability of tone that runs the whole gamut from the apocalyptic to the ironical5
This can be broadly considered as part of the early modern radical style, but, being rife with modalizing elements, it provides a wonderful test case for a linguistic analysis of the scope and pervasiveness of the writer‟s expression of ideologically loaded opinions: if much of suasion is covert, a pragmatic-stylistic analysis of the type proposed here can help lay bare these aspects
Summary
As Neary [29] insists, point of view is “one the most intensively studied areas of stylistic enquiry” (175), in particular in its interaction with modality and ideology. This does not mean that stylisticians have naively ignored the methodological and theoretical dimension of linguistic analysis, but that their main aim is to provide a descriptive account of textual mechanics and the reading process, highlighting the textual evidence that accompanies the reading of a text These theoretical issues confirm that texts in general, and such key factors as point of view and the writer‟s ideological positioning in particular, require an approach to language that considers textual and contextual elements as fundamental as code and grammar aspects: it is necessary to take into account their modalizing potential in order to evaluate attitudes, opinions, and values in a text without running the risk of being content with an easy and mechanical form = meaning equation, already stigmatized by Austin [1]. After a cursory biographical sketch to provide the necessary contextual elements to the texts, I will propose a stylistic analysis of the text (Coppe has been widely studied by literary critics and historians but, to my knowledge, not from a linguistic perspective) to demonstrate how an “extended” pragmatic and stylistic approach can shed light on the author‟s underlying attitude and ideological positioning
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