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Article published In: Dialogues in Diachrony: Celebrating Historical Corpora of Speech-related Texts
Edited by Merja Kytö and Terry Walker
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 19:2] 2018
► pp. 205–222

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Impression management in the Early Modern English courtroom

 | Manchester Metropolitan University
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00019.arc
Abstract
This paper draws upon three texts from the trial section of the Corpus of English Dialogues, in order to explore the tactical impression management strategies used by Early Modern English courtroom participants (defendants, judges, lawyers and witnesses). I will demonstrate that modern impression management strategies (identified with other activity types in mind) are in evidence in the texts, as are additional courtroom-specific strategies. I discuss the nuances of these impression management tactics, in light of (a) the obvious power differences between the participants involved, (b) the need to be perceived as credible in this legal setting, and (c) their convergence with particular types of face(work).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The CED trials used in this study
  • 3.Tactical IM strategies, and their links with face(work)
    • 3.1An outline of defensive IM strategies
    • 3.2An outline of assertive IM strategies
  • 4.IM strategies in the CED Trial texts
    • 4.1Hewet, Lord President and Prideaux
    • 4.2Coleman and Scroggs
    • 4.3Dangerfield, Scroggs and Cellier
  • 5.IM and facework in the historical courtroom: A summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • References
References (43)
Corpora
A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 (CED). 2006. Compiled under the supervision of Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) and Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
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