Pragmatic functions of pray and prithee as discourse markers in Early Modern English

The paper investigates the pragmatic functions of the Early Modern English discourse markers pray and prithee. In the domain of historical politeness, it is suggested that pray worked primarily as a deference indicator, marking negative politeness, and prithee was used to display positive politeness as an in-group identity and solidarity marker. However, after examining the compilation of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which comprises all 37 Shakespeare’s plays, this paper argues that the pragmatic functionality of both discourse markers was far more complex than previously assumed. The data supply evidence of functional overlap and other pragmatic functions of the discourse markers. The current study suggests that the choice between the two discourse markers was a highly context-dependent dynamic, pragmatic phenomenon that was not fully predicated on the sociolinguistic stratification of the era.