The essay investigates some stylistic and pragmatic variations across two genres and text-types pertaining to political oratory in Early Modern England. The speaker in question is the Renaissance monarch who, as many studies have shown from a cultural perspective, appropriates the forms of stage performance and, by manipulating them, acts his power and performs a relationship with his subjects. In this respect my study proposes to analyse and compare some aspects of non-literary and literary texts, Queen Elizabeth I’s parliamentary speeches and Shakespeare’s Henry V’s monologues, as text-types which share a strong persuasive and argumentative aim and are both speech-purposed. The working hypothesis of my case study is that, by drawing attention to two specific speech-acts, directives and commissives, the evaluation of the illocutionary force of their speeches will shed light also on some typical features of the political discourse of Early Modern England.
Tracing speech acts through text and genre: directives and commissives in Queen Elizabeth I’s political speeches and in Shakespeare’s Henry V / Montini, Donatella. - In: STATUS QUAESTIONIS. - ISSN 2239-1983. - ELETTRONICO. - 5:(2013), pp. 130-146.
Tracing speech acts through text and genre: directives and commissives in Queen Elizabeth I’s political speeches and in Shakespeare’s Henry V
MONTINI, Donatella
2013
Abstract
The essay investigates some stylistic and pragmatic variations across two genres and text-types pertaining to political oratory in Early Modern England. The speaker in question is the Renaissance monarch who, as many studies have shown from a cultural perspective, appropriates the forms of stage performance and, by manipulating them, acts his power and performs a relationship with his subjects. In this respect my study proposes to analyse and compare some aspects of non-literary and literary texts, Queen Elizabeth I’s parliamentary speeches and Shakespeare’s Henry V’s monologues, as text-types which share a strong persuasive and argumentative aim and are both speech-purposed. The working hypothesis of my case study is that, by drawing attention to two specific speech-acts, directives and commissives, the evaluation of the illocutionary force of their speeches will shed light also on some typical features of the political discourse of Early Modern England.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.