Epistolary skill and discourse management: the use of metapragmatic utterances in 18th-century Scottish letters

Studies using present-day English data have demonstrated that speakers and writers show reflexive awareness of their own language use by employing metapragmatic comments to monitor and organise their discourse. This study explores to what extent this also applies to historical data and therefore investigates the use of metapragmatic utterances for discourse management purposes in 18th-century Scottish letters. It establishes the different types of metapragmatic utterances attested in the correspondence data and, moreover, assesses the influence of the letter-writers’ epistolary skills on the use of such utterances. The study finds that 18th-century writers applied metapragmatic utterances, mostly realised as set strategies, to prevent misunderstandings by clarifying and structuring their own discourse for the addressees and by judging the appropriateness of their own communicative acts. The findings further indicate that writers were aware of the conventional requirement to employ such metapragmatic utterances irrespective of their level of epistolary skill.