Description

This is a remarkable and innovative collection of articles, not only because there are so few collections which focus on the genre of letters, but also because the papers presented here do not approach letters as finished products of the past. Rather, they trace and reconstruct the highly varied contexts where language users got involved in the activity of letter writing, with the outcome often being determined by power, convention and social interaction. The diversity of the approaches offered by the articles is impressive, including, among others, text typology, critical discourse analysis, politeness theory and the study of language contact. The texts examined range from late medieval Hanseatic letters to 18th century scientific correspondence. The analyses combine solid corpus-based investigations with the wider perspective of society at large. A highly welcome contribution to the study of the history of the genre and a valuable addition to the field of historical pragmatics.