Colliers, farmers, strikers. The discussion of work-related themes in Late Modern Scottish letters and diaries
Palabras clave:
Nineteenth-century correspondence, Late Modern English, labour discourse, evaluative language, emigrants’ lettersResumen
In business discourse, the discussion of work relations is a very interesting branch of study, especially when it refers to contexts that are relatively distant in time and/or space. In this respect, emigrants’ letters and diaries are as invaluable sources of information today as they were when they were written. In this paper I intend to concentrate on nineteenth-century documents and focus on three main issues: the state of the job market, cases of conflict and negotiations, and the narration of accidents or other extraordinary events. The aim is to highlight the main linguistic strategies employed to convey meaning, in order to assess what topics were given prominence, and how they were narrated and evaluated. Data will be drawn from a corpus currently in preparation at the University of Bergamo; while its size does not allow quantitative findings to be offered yet, it is believed that qualitative observations on these unique materials may help shed useful light on the phenomena under discussion.
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Primary sources
Anon. (1840). The British mechanic’s and labourer’s hand book, and true guide to the United States: with ample notices respecting various trades and professions. London: Charles Knight & Co.
Anon. (1905). La più grande e completa grammatica italiana – inglese [...]. Manuale di conversazione [...] Dizionario [...] Segretario con 120 lettere italiane ed inglese [sic]. Lettere per l’operaio, lettere commerciali, lettere amorose. Carta per la cittadinanza. N.p.
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Macaulay, J. (1872). Across the ferry: First impressions of America and its people. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Ruxton, G. F. (1848). Life in the Far West. Blackwood’s Magazine (Jun.-Nov. 1848).
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