TY - BOOK ID - 23110543 TI - Questions and answers in the English courtroom (1640-1760) PY - 2005 VL - 137 SN - 9027253781 9786612156724 1282156721 9027294437 9789027294432 1588116360 9789027253781 9781282156722 6612156724 PB - Amsterdam Philadelphia J. Benjamins Pub. DB - UniCat KW - Sociolinguistics KW - English language KW - Pragmatics KW - anno 1600-1699 KW - anno 1700-1799 KW - Examination of witnesses KW - Evidence (Law) KW - Trial practice KW - Witnesses KW - History KW - Law and legislation KW - England KW - 18th century KW - 17th century UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:23110543 AB - This book belongs to the rapidly growing field of historical pragmatics. More specifically, it aims to lend definition to the area of historical sociopragmatics. It seeks to enhance our understanding of the language of the historical courtroom by documenting changes to the discursive roles of the most active participant groups of the English courtroom (e.g. the judges, lawyers, witnesses and defendants) in the period 1640-1760. Although the primary focus is on questions and answers, this book also analyses the use of eliciting and non-eliciting devices (e.g. requests and commands) as a means of demonstrating similarities and differences over time. Particular strengths of this work include the study of different types of trial, making the results potentially more representative of the courtroom in general, and the innovative discourse analytic approach, which blends corpus methodology and sociopragmatic analysis, thereby enabling the quantitative analysis of functional phenomena. ER -