Private Letters Research Articles

Comparing the register of seventeenth-century Dutch business letters to private letters: formulaic language and French-origin items

Abstract In this article, we examine, quantitatively and qualitatively, Dutch business letters written by merchants, focusing on formulaic phrases and French suffix borrowing. The letters are part of the Prize Papers, the collection of documents confiscated by the English during times of warfare. We compare these business letters to private letters from the same source, and address the question whether the business letters constitute a particular register. The business letters, written by upper and upper-middle ranked male merchants from the seventeenth century, appear to differ from private letters written by people with a similar social profile. Frequent formulae highly characteristic of seventeenth-century private letters occur to a much lesser extent, if at all, in the business letters. Other formulae, some including Romance origin items (Laus deo, saluut, cordiale), occur more frequently in the business letters. The frequency of verbs with the French-origin suffix -eren is found to be higher in the business letters than in the private letters. Functional explanations are presented for these register differences: formulaic language is correlated with writing experience, and the use of French-origin items may be connected to the common vocabulary used in international trading networks. Similarities in phrasing are also revealed in a qualitative analysis of examples of private and business letters by the same writer. This finding demonstrates how similar private and business letters often were, thus challenging the idea of distinct registers.

بولی اورزبان: اردو کے سیاق میں تجزیہ

The initial level of language is called dialect, which helps in maintaining and maintaining daily activities, business transactions, and social relations. The majority of people depend on it. Language derives its energy from local dialects. The range of language is wide and dialect is limited. There can be many dialects in a language area, but there cannot be many languages in a dialect area. Language is the queen of expressing every concept and feeling. Language covers educational, administrative, judicial, political and literary aspects. Script is necessary for language. Due to writing, language documents are preserved and the vocabulary is also increasing day by day. Dialect is mainly verbal expression. However, it is not necessary that every dialect is devoid of writing. Normally its written forms appear in private letters and folk literature.

Muslims in Interwar Vienna: The Making and Failing of a Community

This article explores the making of a unified Muslim community in interwar Austria and its ultimate failure. It argues that while the Islamischer Kulturbund Wien represented a visionary idea which aimed at establishing a Muslim community, rooted in both faith and Austrian society, it ultimately remained the dream of only a select few individuals. The association succeeded in strategically positioning itself as the representative body of Muslims in Austria; however, due to a lack of commitment from its members and the rise of fascism in Austria, this early attempt to establish a unified Muslim community in Austria eventually failed. By incorporating unofficial sources in various languages, including private letters, oral history interviews, and newspapers, alongside official archival material, the article amplifies the voice, perspective and agency of key Muslim figures involved, allowing for a more fully developed understanding of the internal and external dynamics of Muslim activism in interwar Vienna.

Una Trieste per due: Saba attraverso gli occhi di Covacich

This paper draws inspiration by the monologue Saba, produced by Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia and premiered in 2023, on the 140th anniversary of the poet’s birth. The performance serves as the final act of a trilogy dedicated to major figures of twentieth-century literature from Trieste, written and performed by Mauro Covacich. Covacich’s choice of performative medium aims to break down barriers and engage in a more direct, authentic, almost physical communication with his third numen, following Svevo and Joyce. In a vivid portrayal, Covacich emphasizes not only the power of Saba’s poetic language but also his human dimension. The backdrop is Trieste itself, a city intrinsically linked to both Covacich and Saba by an intense yet controversial relationship, though each in a different way. Covacich captures this emotional duality by referencing Saba’s most renowned works, as well as private letters and biographical anecdotes, and intertwining the poet’s personal experience with his own, thus turning the entire monologue into a shared journey.

Politeness and Authority in 3 John: Epistolary Phraseology and Rhetoric Reconsidered

Abstract This paper examines the phraseology of three epistolary formulae—namely, the formula valetudinis initialis (opening health wish formula), the formula of joy, and the καλῶς ποιήσεις formula, in Greco-Egyptian private letters written between the first century bce and third century ce. In particular, we observe that the letter writers make an opening health wish customarily when the letter recipients’ position/status is higher or at least equal to the writers—but rarely when the recipients’ position/status is lower than the writers. Furthermore, when the opening health wishes were made in expanded and reconfigured forms, they signal intensified courtesy to the recipients. The formula of joy also reinforced the favourable atmosphere when persuasion or request was intended. In this vein, the expanded and reconfigured formula valetudinis initialis used together with the formula of joy in 3 John 2–4 shows that the Elder does not intend to write his letter from the position of a higher authority. Furthermore, in requesting hospitality, he uses the καλῶς ποιήσεις formula, indicating his intention to persuade Gaius, whom he also includes in ‘us’ (3 John 12). Thus, the epistolary rhetoric of 3 John fits better with a correspondence between partners rather than an exhortation in an institutionalised hierarchy, unlike the case of the Ignatian letters.

Fostes tu?: Analogical Change in European Portuguese and the Case of the Second Person Singular in the Simple Past (Indicative)

This paper sets out to study the second person–number marking in the (indicative) simple past in the history of European Portuguese, with a particular focus on morphological innovations such as fostes tu, which are considered deviant. These innovations, according to some brief descriptions in the literature (cf. Piel 1989; Williams 1994), are considered a case of morphological change by analogy; however, it remains to be determined whether it is a case of analogical extension or, possibly, leveling that would have resulted in syncretism. Based on data retrieved from private letters from the 16th to the 20th century by almost illiterate authors, we will argue that this innovation results from an analogical extension, motivated by morphological and pragmatic factors.

Potential Impact of USPS Mail Delivery Delays on Colorectal Cancer Screening Programs.

Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Fecal immunochemical tests (FITs) are a primary means of colorectal cancer screening at some health care institutions because of scheduling backlogs for screening, diagnostic, and surveillance endoscopies. However, delays in mail delivery can impact timely analysis of samples, possibly leading to false-negative results and the need for repeat tests. Some patients might be unwilling to submit another test when informed that an earlier sample cannot be reliably analyzed, resulting in a missed opportunity for screening. The Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center has experienced some success through contacting the local US Postal Service (USPS) to avoid these delays; however, the problem often unpredictably recurs with USPS staff turnover. Laboratories and health systems experiencing delays should first ensure that prepaid envelopes have the correct postage and that their USPS accounts are properly funded, to confirm that insufficient funds are not contributing to the delayed deliveries. Adding additional language to the preprinted envelopes, such as "time-sensitive," may also be helpful. Asking patients to drop off test kits at the laboratory or using private letter carriers is not feasible in some communities. Other strategies include establishing a drop-off box at clinic offices or considering other screening methods, such as colonoscopies or flexible sigmoidoscopies. Clinicians who work in health care systems that use FIT kits need to be aware of the impact that local USPS delays can have on the reliability of FIT results. Health systems should be prepared to implement mitigation strategies if significant delays with mail delivery are encountered.

‘My dearest Clara … my dear friend’ – Personal Names and direct address in Mary Hamilton’s private correspondence

Abstract In the eighteenth century, a period dominated by linguistic correctness, propriety and etiquette, appropriate forms of address are a customary feature in correspondence and a key means by which individuals are able to construct their social identity in light of their relationships with others. In this context, and framed within the fields of historical sociolinguistics and historical sociopragmatics, this paper explores the role of direct address as a socially-governed linguistic practice and as an index of politeness, and the focus lies in intra-speaker variation in the use of personal names and honorifics in the opening, body and subscription parts of the letter. The study is based on a set of 170 private letters written by Mary Hamilton (1756–1816), courtier, diarist and a member of the Bluestocking circle, and the analysis considers notions traditionally connected with pragmatic language use such as distance, power and politeness, bearing in mind other content-dependent factors as well. Overall, the research presented here aims to contribute to a growing body of literature which understands ego-documents as providing a window onto language and society.

Anamnesis radości

The essay’s objective is to nuance the experience of joy as mutual and communal and to seek moments that facilitate its diminishing returns (anamnesis). Framed by radical experiences of the past, the essay intertwines the theme of personal loss (punctuated by citations from private letters to the author) with the loss of a homeland.

C.S. Lewis on Female Scholars: A Reply to John D. Rateliff

In John D. Rateliff’s study ‘The Missing Women: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lifelong Support for Women’s Higher Education’, Tolkien’s support of women is unfavourably contrasted with the supposedly dismissive attitude of C.S. Lewis. Rateliff offers three pieces of evidence in support of his argument that Lewis held a contemptuous attitude towards female research students in particular: a private letter by Lewis written in mock late-medieval English; Lewis’s comments about Damaris Tighe, the heroine in Charles Williams’s novel The Place of the Lion; and the character Jane Studdock in Lewis’s own novel That Hideous Strength. This paper argues that Rateliff’s evidence is not only limited but selective and misunderstood. What Lewis rebukes is academic complacency and vanity, not female researchers, many of whom Lewis respected and even befriended. The principle of biographical verification (grounding biographical speculations in biographical rather than imaginative literature) seriously complicates Rateliff’s argument.

Schools of clerks, schools of knights: John Grandisson and Hugh de Courtenay’s French correspondence, 1329–40

Abstract The private letters within the Register of John Grandisson (bishop of Exeter, 1327–69) provide a fascinating insight into the intellectual climate of his episcopate, and attest to his strained relationship with the immensely important local magnate Hugh de Courtenay. Based on a re-examination of the manuscript Register (now held at the Devon Heritage Centre), this article offers the first modern edition and translation of a series of exchanges between the two men during Grandisson’s episcopate. Grandisson’s replies represent an assertion of clerical authority, as the two men fought over what was – in one case, literally – contested terrain.

The First Etherization in England: New Research Regarding the Identity of the First Patient, Miss Lonsdale.

On December 19, 1846, at the London home of Francis Boott, dentist James Robinson administered the vapor of diethyl ether to a young female patient named Miss Lonsdale. This was the earliest known attempt in England to provide painless operating conditions for a dental extraction, and it was successful. Many authors have since written much about Boott and Robinson, but scarcely anything is known about Miss Lonsdale. In contemporaneous accounts of the event, Robinson referred to his patient as a "young person" and a "young lady"; Boott, however, named her, suggesting that she was publicly recognizable. Our initial attempt to identify Miss Lonsdale was based on genealogical, United Kingdom Census, and other public records, using selection criteria based on age, name recognition, familial relationships, and London addresses. This produced 7 possible candidates from publicly recognizable families, though none was notable in her own right. Our second attempt was based primarily on contemporaneous newspaper records, among which were published 2 private letters in which Boott referred to Robinson's patient as a "girl." We found that "Miss Lonsdale" was the publicly recognizable name of 2 young stage-performing sisters, Adeline Lonsdale, a danseuse, and Annie Lonsdale, an actor-comedienne. Both subsequently emigrated to the United States where they were well-known stage performers. Accordingly, we suggest that both are highly probable candidates for that etherized patient, with the younger sister Adeline then more publicly recognizable. However, no records were found that directly associated any of the Miss Lonsdale candidates with that first dental anesthetic in England.

Madame de Sevigné i król Jan III Sobieski – mistrzyni i mistrz epistolografii francuskiej i polskiej XVII w.

Madame de Sévignéand King John III Sobieski –the masters of 17th century French and Polish epistolography Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marchionesse de Sévigné (1626–1696) and John Sobieski (1629–1696) lived during almost the same period of time. The marchioness was three years older, they died in the same year. Lady de Sévigné became a famous epistologra- pher already during her life and shortly after she died. Sobieski’s letters got published only in the 19th c. and their literary value was underlined for the first time by a renown translator of French literature, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, who compared the king’s letters with those of madame de Sévigné. What the marchioness’s and the king’s letters have in common is that these were all private letters to their closest and beloved ones -marchioness’s to her daughter, lady de Grignan and Sobieski’s to his wife, Maria Kazimiera d’Arquien. Due to the distance and longing, a uniquely inspiring epistolography was created. There are of course a lot of differences between their letters, however a number of common threads may be noticed. Many times did lady de Sévigné and Sobieski express a strong belief that their feelings towards the addressees are rare and extremely strong. Similarly, they considered them to possess exceptional traits, not only physical beauty but also outstanding spiritual and mental qualities. In their letters they often articulated their concern about health issues, emphasising that their own physical state depends very much on the condition of their beloved ones. In- spired by Molier’s comedies they knew very well from books and theatres, they would also refer critically to doctors’ opinions. The marchioness was also delighted with her daughter’s knowledge of medical issues and her interest in the philosophy of Descartes, describing it as “cartesienne” and call- ing the philosopher her spiritual father. Although Sobieski’s letters do not contain any philosophical reflection, he is known to be familiar with Cartesianism and to have kept the works of Descartes in his library. What is characteristic for both collections of letters and also unique for this period, is a close and warm relation with children’s world – marchioness’s grandchildren and So- bieski’s children. The grandmother and father used to take a lot of interest in their health, cared about their illnesses, gave advice on intellectual development. In the marchioness’s and the king’s letters some pre-romantic elements are also present which are visible in their attitude towards the nature – e.g. Lady de Sévigné mentioning her night walks under the moonlight and Sobieski contemplating the sunset.

Identifier et décrire l’hétérogénéité du français aux 17e et 18e siècles : le projet MACINTOSH (Missing hAlf the picture, ClassIcal NoT sO claSsical FrencH)

Abstract This article presents a project focusing on French private letters written during the 17th and 18th centuries. As the first French initiative to ever investigate this collection, the project aims to show how the alternative data provided by these letters can broaden the scope by filling the gaps left by traditional historical linguistics, focusing on one of French’s greatest periods of expansion and shedding new light on the dynamics and mechanisms that led to the existing French and creole varieties in America and in the Indian Ocean.

Research project “Chronicle of Borys Grinchenko’s life and work”: from the vision to the practical implementation

The chronicle of the life and work of Borys Dmytrovych Grinchenko is compiled based on ego-documents (private letters (written and received), diary, individual records) memories of contemporaries, textological studies and is an urgent task of today, because it causes a rethinking of the profound meanings that the collective memory preserves. The purpose of the presented study is to reconstruct the events in B. Grinchenko’s life during 1883. The subject of the study was biographical data, as well as personal qualities, character traits, peculiarities of everyday life and all other data that make it possible to reproduce the facts from the life of Borys Grinchenko as exhaustively as possible. The theoretical and methodological framework is based on the general principles of scientificity, objectivity and specificity of truth, which are accepted in various scientific concepts, and are based on the use of the entire array of sources and their comprehensive analysis. The results of the study. 98 private letters written or received by Borys Grinchenko in 1883, his 76-page pocket notebook for 1883, and notes on scraps of paper (33 sheets of various formats and shapes), which were exchanged by students of temporary (summer) pedagogical courses in Zmiiv — friends and associates of Borys Grinchenko were found, systematized, analyzed and described. Attention to the year 1883 is due, firstly, to the fact that, according to individual testimonies, Borys Grinchenko began his writing activity in this year; secondly, attending pedagogical courses in the summer of 1883 became a step in Grinchenko’s professional growth as a teacher; thirdly, at the teacher’s courses, he met Maria Gladylina — his future wife, and this meeting determined their future life and joint work for the benefit of Ukrainian culture and enlightenment. 1883 is the year that falls into the third period of Borys Grinchenko’s life identified by researchers as Slobozhanshchyna (1881–1885). The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the analyzed documents made it possible to imagine and describe the life, activities, feelings, experiences, joys and disappointments of Borys Grinchenko during 1883, on his twentieth birthday. In the ego-documents, the private and professional appear seriously and as a joke, which is extremely valuable for revealing the personality of Borys Grinchenko and compiling his biography.

English Patriotism and the Implicit Nation: Homelands and Soldiers’ National Identity during the Great War

Abstract This article explores the patriotism and national identity of English soldiers during the First World War. Using this conflict as a case-study, it draws together work on Great War mentalities and scholarship on Englishness. It argues that individuals’ national identity focused on and formed around the ‘implicit nation’, which was primarily concerned with communities and parochial local (or regional) spaces. There was no ‘essential’ England: the homeland could be rural or urban, natural or human. English national identity embraced this plurality. Using published material, soldiers’ newspapers and private letters, diaries and postcards, this article highlights the ways in which allegiance to an ‘implicit nation’ was nurtured by a military that championed local and regional identities. As subjects, not citizens, soldiers naturally centred their attention on the communities and landscapes of their homeland. The war did not diminish men’s emotional connections to these homelands; in fact, it made them all the stronger. In concentrating on the subjective and emotional features of patriotism, this paper suggests that Englishness was inherently heterogeneous and drew its strength from this. Rather than a commitment to abstract structures such as the state, or theoretical political principles, it argues that English national identity embraced a composite, or patchwork, of mutually supporting patriotisms attached to particular homelands. It was a sense of these homelands that underlay men’s identification with Britishness, the Empire and the monarchy. Importantly, soldiers’ experience of the First World War gave this a new (or at least more vocal) articulation.

A scale for measuring writing skills: private letters in the context of portuguese immigration to Brazil in the 20th century

O artigo apresenta uma proposta para a análise do grau de habilidade com a escrita de redatores de 99 cartas privadas escritas no contexto da imigração portuguesa para o Brasil de 1948 a 1960. Baseados em Barbosa, 2017 e Santiago, 2019, a análise é feita a partir do levantamento de desvios gráficos em relação ao referencial modelar escolhido, separando-se os redatores em um gradiente de habilidade. A proposta permitiu categorizar o corpus de cartas em função de critérios objetivos, evidenciando que os remetentes produziram textos mais ou menos influenciados pelas práticas correntes da escrita. Ademais, alguns desvios ocorreram apenas nos remetentes de menor grau de habilidade e são possivelmente “mais graves” ou indicativos de uma baixa habilidade com a escrita do que aqueles observados nos remetentes mais hábeis.

By Miranda, Mary Hamilton, Mrs Dickenson … Self-reference in Late Modern English private correspondence

This paper is set in the late Georgian period, when letter writing became a widespread social practice and letter-writing manuals established norms of propriety and elegance of style for addressing persons of all ranks. More specifically, it turns its attention to author-oriented address with a focus on the use of personal names in self-reference expressions, as these address the recipient of the letter at the same time as they describe the status of the writer. The aim is to explore their role as a means of socially-governed linguistic practice and as an index of politeness on the positive-negative continuum, as proposed for Early Modern English correspondence.
 The study is based on a set of private letters written by Mary Hamilton (1776–1814), a well-connected figure in royal, aristocratic and literary circles. The analysis traces intra-speaker variation in the use of self-reference in the main text and in the signature, and explores sociolinguistic factors (gender) as well as notions traditionally connected with pragmatic language use (distance, relative power). The research presented here will thus contribute to the growing body of literature that considers ego-documents as representations of the self, of particular interest in the fields of historical sociolinguistics and historical sociopragmatics.

“I Thought you had Forgotten me”: A Corpus-Pragmatic Examination of the Mental Verb Think in Irish Emigrants’ Letters

This paper sets out to explore the interface between migration experiences and epistolary discourse in CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (McCafferty and Amador-Moreno in preparation). Using corpus and computational methods, this investigation aims to empirically explore language usage in the letters exchanged between the Irish in the United States of America, Australia and New Zealand and their loved ones back in Ireland. Specifically, the study proposes a corpus-pragmatic examination of the mental verb think in an attempt to explain the function of such verb in the negotiation of epistolary relationships, that is, how it helps to reinforce and maintain crucial emotional and physical links between emigrants and their families in Ireland. The material will be searched using Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004). In the quantitative stage, corpus tools such as the Corpus Query Language (CQL) function will be utilised to identify and collect the linguistic patterns that characterise the epistolary discourse under analysis. Qualitatively, a detailed inspection of such patterns will be conducted in order to provide access to historical forms of communication in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish emigration as well as the use of involvement-marking strategies in private letters.

The Process of Becoming a War Refugee: The Case of a Finnish Boy

The article observes the different stages of the gradual process by which Olev Mikiver became a refugee, following the formation and interweaving of his professional (artist’s) identity, his identity as a soldier and as a refugee, based on his private letters. The study mainly focuses on four letters written by Mikiver during the Finnish Continuation War, in which he participated as a volunteer in 1943–1944; these volunteers later became known as the Finnish Boys. The analysis of the letters focuses on the topics discussed in the letters and on Mikiver’s word usage. In addition to verbal means of expression, visual means have also been observed to gain additional information about the changes in identity, attitudes, and mood of the letter-writer. The analysis showed that despite Mikiver remaining a devoted artist, he adopted the soldier identity in a relatively short time and no conflict arose between the two identities. In 1944, Mikiver fled to Sweden. Based on the letters he sent to his friend Ilmar Laaban between 1948 and 1993, some observations have also been made about how he coped with refugee life in Sweden. In the post-war period, the opportunity to continue as an artist in exile, on the one hand, and the sense of solidarity with other Finnish Continuation War veterans on the other hand, helped Mikiver overcome his depression as a refugee.