The <i>reader</i> in the text across time and genres

The development of uses of reader (third-person and vocative) are investigated in the Corpus of Late Modern English Text (1710-1920) with regard to frequencies and functions. Overall, reader declines, indicating a shift away from nominal and more formal style. Third-person uses are more common than vocatives, which cluster especially in the early nineteenth century and in emotive, personalized texts. A functional analysis is carried out on treatises and narrative fiction. Readers are positioned and (dis)aligned with the writer through the use of possessive pronouns, quantifiers and adjectives in contrast to bare unmodified uses. Reader occurrences may be explained as metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005) or intersubjective uses. They involve the reader in responsive thought or action with the text and steer them towards interpretations. They are also integrated into emotive and attitudinal contexts, in which overt attention is given to the face needs of the reader.