A Study of Speech Acts from a Perspective of Historical Pragmatics

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25370562
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Hosei University
• Principal Investigator: SHIINA Michi 法政大学, 文学部, 教授 (20153405)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 歴史語用論 / 呼びかけ語研究 / コーパスアプローチ / 文体論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This is a case study in historical pragmatics with a focus on the power relationships in Early-Modern (E-Mod) English society. Its main purpose is to show how a discursive approach can be applied to E-Mod English trial texts. The main text to be analysed is taken from the trial of King Charles I in the Socio-Pragmatic Corpus (SPC), which collects E-Mod English spoken data in comedy and trial texts from 1640 to 1760 (Archer and Culpeper 2003). My research questions are: (1) What are the points at issue for the judge and the defendant?; (2) What speech acts do they perform?; (3) Who has the power in this interaction, Lord President or the King?

Free Research Field

歴史語用論