These extracts taken from Lady Pennington’s letter represent
the language used in the prestigious community people would associate themselves
with. Her overly prestigious language portrays her personal power, which she
uses for influencing her absent daughters.
Later on, her direct language would become effective for a
published version of a book as it engages readers and also increases the sale ratings.
The suggestion of a published version comes from my doubt in her language used,
as the process of her writing seems strongly thought out and decreases the
amount of personal speech needed to make a connection between herself and her
daughters. Her language is direct, portraying the bold on record form, and adds
a more of an impact on the connection made between herself and the readers (not for her daughters) in comparison
to texts that wouldn’t include the second person plural ‘you’.
It seems there is a sub purpose to this letter with the
usage of ‘him’, in-directing her words to her ex husband signifying it was made
for him to read also. This creates doubt on the reasoning this was made, since
after analysing, it comes across that it was written to be published for a
wider audience to read given from the usage of indirect language, instead of being
wrote purely for her daughters to take advice from.
She has accommodated her language to suit the readers, with slight
comedy to entertain. The use of zoomorphism when she says ‘he is the most intractable
of all animals’ creates imagery in the imperative, used to advise people to not
marry a fool. However, it is unpredictable whether someone you were to marry
would become a ‘fool’ or not, so this implies it is another substantial
indirect to her husband describing the way she felt about him. She created
empathy for herself adding slight vulnerability into her writing with the use
of ‘therefore advise you scarce ever to meddle with any of them’ after explaining
she has seen frequent instances. She also uses warnings, suggesting her
daughters should listen and learn from her mistakes when writing the words ‘I
can with great confidence advise’ perhaps implying she has made the mistake of
marrying someone too wrong for her.
There are two differences presented in this extract, of the
language used contrasted to today’s way of writing. One is the use of f’s instead
of s’s. Using f’s became insignificant during the 19th century as it
was proven that there were no change in pronunciation, it was also standardised
when printing press came in for newspapers – becoming abandoned in printers and
type founders in the mid 1790s. Hyper-correct grammars found in these extracts
are another difference from our writing/language today, of the wrongly use of semi
colons. The space in-between a word and the semi colon seem insignificant also,
as it adds nothing to her writing. In comparison to the use of the semi colon in
this day and age there isn’t much difference, but the hyper-correct grammar is
slightly diverse. However, she did use brackets correctly creating comments
that mimic conversation earnestness.
Some really subtle and perceptive points. Good on GRAPE. Some good terminology - more needed so analyse more quotes more closely. Needs more A02 so evaluate the relevance of at least one theory per paragraph - even if it is not supported but contradicted by the text.
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraph has a few issues in it: "it was proven" suggests that it was found out when of course it was always purely orthographical. You could link it to being a prestige form that was made obsolete when it was found to be more problematic during the development of printing techniques. You could then link to modern prestige forms like 'whom' that are changing synchronically as part of the process of simplification that drives language change. It is important not to be prescriptive about the use of punctuation - remember that it is published before standardisation due to popular grammar books like Lowth's Grammar really took hold. So rules that we adhere to now had not been established and there were more variations at this time, or it could be that that was the standard and the standard has undergone diachronic change.
Plan for including more terms, theories and specifics about how language has changed since then, was changing then, and is changing now.