Linguistic and stylistic constructions of witchcraft and witches: A case of witchcraft pamphlets in early modern England

A Historical Discourse Analysis project, this dissertation explores the discursive relationship between language in use and the construction of ideologies about witchcraft and witches within the context of Early Modern England---a part of the European "witch craze" or "witch hunt." Rather than searching for historical evidence to explain why the phenomenon took place, reached its peak, and declined, the project seeks to understand the ways in which meanings about the witchcraft and witches ideologies are constructed through linguistic and stylistic means used in witchcraft pamphlets---a type of publication which generically straddles between the literary/narrative and legal report genres. The project, therefore, argues that although there are particular socio-historical factors that gave rise to ideologies about witchcraft and witches, it is primarily language use that underlies, produces, reproduces, and perpetuates these ideologies throughout this period and far beyond.; This project has chosen for analysis witchcraft pamphlets which document witch trials occurring at several assize courts throughout England between approximately 1566 to 1762. Specifically, this dissertation examines these pamphlets in terms of their generic production, their syntactic (re)production of the main participants in witchcraft---the witches and the victims, their stylistic attempts to control the mind of the reader, and finally, courtroom interaction between the judges and the accused. This dissertation, therefore, considers not only such textual aspects of witchcraft pamphlets as lexical, stylistic, and structural choices, but also the ways in which these choices interact with wider social contexts, thereby (re)constructing our understanding of witchcraft and witches.; Guided by Normal Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse analysis, this dissertation begins, in Chapter One, by giving an overview of witchcraft in Early Modern England and witchcraft pamphlets as a site in which ideologies about witchcraft and witches are generated as well as the explanation of a disciplinary framework that is used in this dissertation. Chapter Two examines the production of the witchcraft pamphlets in terms of genres that give rise to this new genre of writing. Chapter Three focuses on analyzing transitivity patterns in the pamphlets, paying particular attention to the ways in which witches and victims are represented syntactically. Chapter Four expands the scope from text proper to the social world by exploring the pamphleteer's linguistic and stylistic attempts to draw the readers in via implicit persuasion. Finally, focusing on the spoken discourse of witchcraft, Chapter Five examines the ways in which the accused seek self-face and self-politeness in their responses during witch trials.