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Genre (letter/newspaper article/diary/magazine/brochure/leaflet/advert/report)
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Audience (men/women/class/specific….)
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Purpose ( to inform/persuade/entertain… is it dual purpose?)
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Context (date written, producer of text, gender/power/technology)
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Archaisms- fallen out of usage due to lack of necessity/synonyms existing (‘breeches’ has been replaced with ‘trousers’)- this word is not required any more (‘kerchief’ - we do not tend to use these)
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Taboo Language/Political Correctness- older texts may censor words that we would find acceptable in modern english- modern texts may contain words that would not be found in modern texts- older texts may contain diminutive suffixes ‘ess’ & ‘ette’ that indicate femininity, this may be reduced in more modern texts as there is no need for distinction- older texts may use sexist language/phrases
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Lexical Change- initialism or acronym formation/clipping/abbreviating- backformation or affixation- borrowings
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Compounding- word may be seen in two parts that is now in one part- attempt may be made at compounding that has not caught on
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Semantic Shift (nb. could be used under framework of semantics)- amelioration (a word becomes more positive)- pejoration (a word becomes more negative, eg. ‘hussy’ used to mean housewife, now has negative sexual connotations)- weakening (a word loses some of its original force, eg. ‘terrible’ used to mean ‘causing terror’, now refers to something bad)- strengthening (a word takes on a stronger meaning) - broadening (a word takes on a wider meaning, eg. ‘bird’ used to refer to one particular species of bird, now it refers to that class of animal as a whole)- narrowing (a word’s meaning is reduced, eg. ‘meat’ used to refer to all food, now it refers to animal flesh in particular)
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Cursive ‘s’- cursive s has fallen out of use over time as it largely performed the same function as the ‘short’ s
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Addition of letters (particularly vowel sounds)- extra ‘e’ at the end of words = remains of french influence on english language- other additions may just be uncertainty around spelling
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Transposition (switching letters) - uncertainty at how to spell it, due to lack of standardisation
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Phonetic Spellings- author may work out spellings from how they are said- there may be a dialectical influence on this (spelling of words will reflect the author’s accent)
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Inconsistency in Spelling- author may use both the ‘correct’ modern spelling & a different spelling of the same word - showing lack of standardisation
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Sentence type & length- older texts favour long, complex sentences (with subordinate clauses), modern texts would use simpler, shorter sentences for ease of understanding
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Omission of (auxiliary) verbs
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Tense- tense may switch within the text, due to lack of formation
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Negative Formation- ‘I deny it not’ (older) v ‘I do not deny it’ (modern) → we do not indicate negatives at the end of sentences in modern English
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Contractions- modern english favours enclitic contractions (contractions at the end of words, eg. ‘it’s) whereas older english favoured proclitic contractions (contractions at the beginning of words, eg. ‘’tis’) - contractions such as ‘ne’er’, ‘o’er’ are archaic (contractions such as these were common in the 18th century, as poets wanted to make words fit the metre of their poems)
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Punctuation- may be a hypercorrect use of semicolon (whilst it is still used in modern english, it is not as popular as it was at the time. use may be seen as largely limited to academic texts)- may miss out apostrophes- may use lots of commas & semicolons, link to long, complex sentences
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Formality/informality- does this fit with the genre of the text? would a modern text in this genre be more/less formal? - may be expressed through higher order lexis, third person…
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Handwritten- has this affected spelling?
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Printing Press- has this resulted in omission/addition of spaces/letters in order to fit onto lines?
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Columns - may have been difficult for the printing press to align all of these words
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Italics/bold/style - these would have been very expensive to be printed, stylistic features may be used to show wealth & prestige of the producer of the text
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Pictures- expensive to print
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King James Bible, 1611
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Education Act, 1880 -- made education compulsory up to the age of ten (more literate people)