In:Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics
Edited by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin and Anita Auer
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 7] 2017
► pp. 109–127
Discord in eighteenth-century genteel correspondence
Published online: 19 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.7.05nev
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.7.05nev
This chapter studies representations of discord in the correspondence of eighteenth-century English gentry. The study aims at charting various ways in which the upper classes negotiated conflict situations and cases where norms of society were challenged, by mapping the social meaning of relevant labels according to the three themes of discord, disgrace, and disorder. The methodological starting point is in Nevalainen and Tissari’s (2010) study of the shifting cultural keywords courtesy, civility, and politeness, which we also study here along with the lexemes discord, disgrace, embarrassment, mortification, and shame. The results show that civility, politeness, and shame all function as tools for social control and critical evaluation of self and others.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Polite society of eighteenth-century England
- 2.2Discord in the eighteenth century: Linguistic and socio-cultural background
- 3.Relationships between politeness and discord: Methods
- 3.1Socio-cultural embedding of politeness terminology (Nevalainen & Tissari 2010)
- 3.2Discord terminology in the current study
- 4.Case studies: Discord in eighteenth-century correspondence
- 4.1Discord proper
- 4.2Disgrace
- 4.3Disorder
- 5.Concluding remarks
Notes References
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2020. The discourse of manners and politeness in Restoration and
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Jucker, Andreas H.
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