Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 18:1 (2017) ► pp.30–57

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Royal language and reported discourse in sixteenth-century correspondence

 | University of Leicester
Published online: 26 October 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.18.1.02eva
Abstract
This paper investigates the formal and functional dimensions of reported discourse in sixteenth-century correspondence. It focuses on how letter-writers report the utterances – spoken, thought and written – of high-status sources (namely, the king or queen), in order to assess how the early modern reporting system compares with the present-day equivalent. The early modern values of authenticity, verbatim reporting and verbal authority are examined. The results taken from the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC) suggest that early modern writers prefer to present royal language using indirect reports with semi-conventionalised linguistic features that clearly mark the authority of the source. Only an elite few, associated with the Court, use direct speech. The paper suggests that reporting practices distinguish between speech and writing, with the latter showing nascent signs of anxiety over verbatim reporting. I argue that these trends arise from the larger cultural shift from oral to written records taking place throughout the early modern period.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reporting language in present-day English
  • 3.Reported language in Early Modern English
  • 4.Methodology: Royal reports in correspondence
  • 5.Overview of results
  • 6.Royal direct speech reports
  • 7.Royal indirect speech
  • 8.Summary: Direct and indirect royal speech
  • 9.Royal indirect thought
  • 10.Expressed intent
  • 11.Royal reports of writing
  • 12.Conclusion: Early Modern styles of reporting authority
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
References (43)
Sources
Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC). (Text version.) 2006. Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin, with additional annotation by Ann Taylor. Helsinki: University of Helsinki and York: University of York. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blackwell, Natalia and Jean E. Fox-Tree. 2012. “Social factors affect quotative choice”. Journal of Pragmatics 44 (10): 1150–1162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burrow, Colin. 2011 [2004]. “Wyatt, Sir Thomas (c.1503–1542)”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 24 October 2014 at: [URL].
Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen R. 1994. “On Reporting Reporting: The Representation of Speech in Factual and Factional Narratives”. In Malcolm Coulthard (ed.), Analysing Written Text, 295–308. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cromwell, Thomas. 1540. CP 1/24. Cecil Papers Online. Accessed 26 October 2014 at: [URL].
Clark, Herbert H. and Richard J. Gerrig. 1990. “Quotations as Demonstrations”. Language 66 (4): 764–805. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clanchy, M. T. 2013. From Memory to Written Record. (Third edition.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clift, Rebecca and Elizabeth Holt. 2007. “Introduction”. In Clift and Holt (eds), Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton, N.J.; Guildford: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan and Dawn Archer. 2008. “Requests and Directness in Early Modern English Trial Proceedings and Play Texts, 1640–1760”. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Speech Acts in the History of English, 45–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daybell, James. 2012. The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Cultures and Practices of Letter-Writing 1512–1635. London: Palgrave. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Mel. 2013. The Language of Queen Elizabeth I: A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Royal Style and Identity. Transactions of the Philological Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gordon, Andrew. 2016. “Material Fictions: Counterfeit Correspondence in Early Modern England”. In James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, 85–109. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Griffiths, Paul, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle. 1996. The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Edward. 1809 [1548]. Hall’s Chronicle, Containing the History of England During the Reign of Henry IV and the Succeeding Monarchs to the End of the Reign of Henry VIII. Edited by H. Ellis. London Available online at: [URL].
Ikeo, Reiko. 2012. “Misleading speech report in the media with a special reference to an Australian defamation case”. Journal of Pragmatics 44 (10): 1183–1205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johansen, Marianne. 2011. “Agency and Responsibility in Reported Speech”. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (11): 2845–2860. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 1987. “He says… so I said: Verb Tense Alteration and Narrative Depictions of Authority in American English”. Linguistics 25 (1): 33–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lampropoulou, Sofia. 2012. Direct Speech, Self-presentation and Communities of Practice. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N. and Mick Short. 2007. Style in Fiction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leithead, Howard. 2004 [2009]. “Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex (b. in or before 1485, d. 1540)”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 24 October 2014 at: [URL].
Li, Charles N. 1986. “Direct and Indirect Speech: A Functional Study”. In Florian Coulmas (ed.), Direct and Indirect Speech, 29–34. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matoesian, Greg. 2000. “Intertextual Authority in Reported Speech: Production Media in the Kennedy Smith Rape Trial”. Journal of Pragmatics 321: 879–914. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McIntyre, Dan and Brian Walker. 2011. “Discourse Presentation in Early Modern English Writing: A Preliminary Corpus-based Investigation”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16 (1): 101–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moore, Colette. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Reporting Direct Speech in Early Modern Slander Depositions”. In Donna Minkova and Peter Stockwell (eds), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 399–416. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevala, Minna. 2004. Address in Early English Correspondence: Its Forms and Socio-Pragmatic Functions. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Routledge Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna and Minna Nevala. 2010. “Reporting and Social Role Construction in Eighteenth-century Personal Correspondence”. In Païvi Pahta, Minna Nevala and Arja Nurmi (eds), Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English, 111–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pender, Patricia. 2013. Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Satoh, Akira. 2001. “Constructing Imperial Identity: How to Quote the Imperial Family and Those Who Address Them in the Japanese Press”. Discourse and Society 12 (2): 169–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semino, Elena and Mick Short. 2004. Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin M. 2009. Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Short, Mick. 2012. “Discourse Presentation and Speech (and Writing, but not Thought) Summary”, Language and Literature 21 (1): 18–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Short, Mick, Elena Semino and Martin Wynne. 2002. “Revisiting the Notion of Faithfulness in Discourse Presentation Using a Corpus Approach”. Language and Literature 11 (4): 325–355. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 2007. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. (Second edition.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 1994. Collins CoBuild English Guides. 5: Reporting. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff and Yiyun Ye. 1991. “Evaluation in the Reporting Verbs Used in Academic Papers”. Applied Linguistics 121: 365–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Voloshinov, Valentin Nikolaevich. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York and London: Seminar Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wade, Elizabeth and Herbert H. Clark. 1993. “Reproduction and Demonstration in Quotations”. Journal of Memory and Language 32 (6): 805–819. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Moore, Colette
2025. Vernacular Speech in Writing. In The New Cambridge History of the English Language, ► pp. 50 ff. DOI logo
Thomas, Jenelle
2023. Repeated, imagined, hearsay. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 24:2 ► pp. 302 ff. DOI logo
Eisenbruch, Miriam A.
2022. The subjunctive in Renaissance French. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 23:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Mazzon, Gabriella
2022. Shifting responsibility in passing information. In English Historical Linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 358], ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo
Evans, Mel
2020. Royal Voices, DOI logo
Grund, Peter J.
2020. What it means to describe speech. In Late Modern English [Studies in Language Companion Series, 214], ► pp. 295 ff. DOI logo
GRUND, PETER J.
2023. Disgusting, obscene and aggravating language: speech descriptors and the sociopragmatic evaluation of speech in theOld Bailey Corpus. English Language and Linguistics 27:3 ► pp. 517 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue