Contrastive relational markers in women’s expository writing in nineteenth-century English

Abstract

This study seeks to analyse the occurrence of contrastive relational markers in a corpus of recipes called Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English, the 19th century sub-corpus (COWITE19). Opposition relations, also referred to as adversative or contrastive, are usually identified with markers such as “but”, “although”, and “however”. From a semantic point of view, a classification of these relations can be established into contrast, concession, and corrective, based on their linguistic evidence, lexical differences and syntactic behaviour (Izutsu, 2008). A further rhetorical function is antithesis, presented as a consistent device possessed of a verbal, analytical and persuasive nature (Fahnestock, 1999). The analysis of these markers is made following a computerised corpus analysis methodology and tries to discern which contrastive markers are mostly employed for the instructions conveyed by females. It also shows which opposition relation is predominant, whether contrastive, concessive, or corrective and, finally, it detects antithesis as an additional opposing meaning. In all cases, the possible argumentative role of these markers is highlighted as another step in the characterisation of women’s scientific writing.