3 - Pragmatic Perspectives on Royal Letters

Summary

Chapter 3 looks at three pragmatic properties of royal correspondence: metacommunication, self-reference and regulative speech acts. Each feature reflects how royal correspondence constructs the relationship between sovereign and subject, and the extralinguistic context in which the letters operate. The evidence for metacommunication indicates that royal correspondence draw attention to their processes of composition, their material worth, and the intended nature of their reception. Scribal letters foregrounded their legal legitimacy, whereas holograph documents point to the personal investment of the author. Self-reference highlights the pragmatic affordances of royal we as a distinctive pronominal option of royal correspondence, particularly in scribal letters. The discussion of regulative speech acts, such as directives, illustrates the formulaicity of these pragmatic acts, with different degrees of directness operating in scribal and holograph letter types.