Letter-writing manuals and the evolution of requests markers in the eighteenth century

Abstract

In eighteenth century England the middle classes were looking for assistance guides to help them to move upwards in society. Among those help books we find letter-writing manuals, a very popular text-type in the Late Modern English period, which provided information on how to write letters on any occasion. It is also in the eighteenth century when we observe the beginning of the replacement of pray by please as the default courtesy marker in requests, which would not be fully accomplished until the beginning of the twentieth century. The epistolary genre in general is a good source for the analysis of requests due to the interactive character of letters. Letter-writing manuals in particular offer an organised collection of letters and other correspondence texts according to topic, senders or receivers, among others, which makes them ideal for the study of pragmatic features. Therefore a diachronic study of pray and please constructions in this text-type will provide insights regarding the shift of request markers, their main function and the processes of change. The popularity of letter-writing manuals, instruction books for specific purposes, may have influenced the replacement.