Minutes from 21.11.12

Minutes from 21.11.2012

In today’s meeting, we concentrated on the production of the PowerPoint presentation. We collaborated our separate PowerPoint slides by sending them, via email, to one computer. Once they were all amalgamated, we looked at the aesthetics and structure. Therefore, we included an opening page which included the research question, an introduction page where we will write our intentions and then our separate analysis sections.

We considered ethical issues and anonymised the letters by tippexing out the name and using the first character instead.

Did we come across any problems?

We had two names beginning with M and so we decided to call one person M and the other Ma

We had problems deciding how much information we wish to put on each page of the powerpoint. Do we want bullet points? Do we want chunks of writing? In order to overcome this issue, we decided it would be best to have the same colour scheme as a matter of continuity for the presentation but include as much relevant information as we each thought necessary in our own sections. This meant each of the sections would have different amounts of text. We can then all make our own set of cue cards to aid our narration.

What else did we do?

We have also signed up for the narrated powerpoint “Author Stream”. This enables us to start working on a narrated powerpoint.

What we want to do next:

-          Ensure the PowerPoint is structured correctly and is aesthetically pleasing

-          Meg will send the PowerPoint to all of us so we can make our own changes

-          Make separate cue cards for each of our presentation sections

-          Time the presentation to make sure we don’t run under or over

-          Create a voice over that will run adjacent to the presentation

-          Meet again for a final run through

-          Get a folder to collect the letters/annotations which will be shown in the presentation session on Wednesday 5^th December

Next Meeting: Wednesday 28^th November 4pm

Meeting Minutes from November 13th

The first thing we discussed at our meeting was what we needed to do next. As the weeks pass, the presentation is ever looming - so we thought it would be a good idea to get together some ideas about ours.

 

These were some of the key points that we wanted to make sure our presentation fulfilled...

• We want lots of imagery. We were all decided that there really is nothing worse than a bland-looking powerpoint presentation, so we have come to the decision that we are going to include lots of relevant imagery. This could mean images off the internet, photos we take ourselves, pictures we find in printed media (scanned in)

 

• We want our presentation to be very clear - so we thought it would be a good idea to have our first slide as our project question, and our last slide as the outcomes we have come up with.

 

• We are all a bit anxious about being videoed entirely individually, so we have agreed that for the first few introductory slides, we will all be together.

 

• We are going to delegate ourselves 2 or 3 slides each to keep our presentation concise. So for next time, we've agreed to come up with a brief bullet pointed slide each, which we will then combine at our next meeting when we start to work on our presentation.

What to do for next time...

• We want our audience to actually see our letters how they were written/published. So I have taken on the responsibility to have our letters enlarged and printed on to A3 paper so that we can have them displayed. This isn't vital until the day of presentation though.

 

• We will work on our planning slides and bring them next time for combination.

 

• We want our annotations to be on display too, so we are going to bring all of our annotated letters to the next meeting and put them into a presentable folder so that our audience can browse through them if they wish to do so - giving a nice insight into some of the first stages of analysis that we covered.

 

• We need to familiarise ourselves with how to make a video - so we are going to look at the RSEL wiki for ideas and tips.

 

• We need to prepare a full bibliography of background reading that we have done, so we are all collecting our references and writing them down so that, in due course, we can put them down officially in time for the presentation.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 21st November.

Useful Ideas and Quotations on Pragmatics, from 'Meaning in Interaction' by Jenny Thomas

            I have spent some time reading ‘Meaning in Interaction’ by Jenny Thomas and noting down any ideas, theories, or statements that I believe might be relevant to, or helpful in further analysis of our love letters with regards to pragmatics (and possibly other areas, for example, lexis). I intend to look over the findings from my original analysis of the letters, and decide whether anything I’ve learnt from this book can explain specific occurrences or trends I have noticed.

Ideas

(p.63-64) ‘Grice’s Conversational Maxims’:

Quantity:  -‘Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange)’

-‘Don’t make it more informative than required’ – May be used to explain the level/ lack of detailed information in each letter, taking into consideration the contextual elements surrounding the relationships between writer and reader of each letter.

Relation: - ‘Be relevant’. – May be useful in explaining the concise nature of some of the letters, and the focus on topics immediately related to the relationship being represented, ie. Why the army is a theme in M’s letter to MJ/ why Beethoven’s letter talks of nothing but his love for the recipient, etc.

Manner: - ‘Avoid obscurity of expression.’

-       ‘Avoid ambiguity.’

-       ‘Be brief.’

-       ‘Be orderly.’ – Avoidance of ambiguity might explain the candidness of particularly older love letters, eg. Beethoven. It will be interesting to look and see if anything said in any of the letters is in any way ambiguous, and what this might say about the writer/ the letter/ the relationship. The idea that communicators should be ‘orderly’ will be useful when looking at the generic love letter conventions and layouts which appear in various places in our data.

Indirectness

-       (p.120) ‘[indirectness is]’costly’ in the sense that an indirect utterance takes longer for the…[writer]…to produce’.

-       ‘it is ‘risky’ in the sense that the hearer may not understand what the speaker is getting at’.

-       ‘they may wish to avoid hurting someone else’. – This last one in particular might be used to explain the indirectness in M’s letter to MJ, where the idea that he may not return from the army is not said explicitly. Otherwise, these can relate to and explain the levels of directness/indirectness found in each letter.

-       (p.120-121) ‘there are things which (arguably)…human beings find impossible to express. This could be because certain concepts beyond our present understanding…[this]…applies to the expression of very powerful emotions, such as love’. – Will be either proven or disproven by looking at each of the texts to see how direct each letter is in conveying love.

-       (p.128) ‘If you feel close to someone, because…you know him or her well or are similar in terms of age, social class… you feel less need to employ indirectness’.

-       Reasons for using directness: (p.143) ‘To increase the force of one’s message’, ‘The desire to make one’s language more/less interesting’, ‘people may use indirectness because they enjoy having fun with language’.

-       ALSO: (p.144) ‘If your hearer has to work at understanding the message, he or she has a greater ‘investment’ in that message’. – The above reasons can be used to explain why eg. Beethoven and Henry VIII have used metaphor and simile in their letters.

Politeness

-       (p.157) Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) – ‘politeness is interpreted as a strategy employed by a speaker to achieve a variety of goals, such as prompting or maintaining harmonious relations’. – Can be used to explain the keenness to keep the recipient of the letter in good humour, the emphasis on the faithfulness of their love and requests for reassurance that the love is still reciprocated.

-       (p.159) Leech’s ‘Politeness Principle 1’ – ‘Minimise…the expression of impolite beliefs; Maximise…the expression of polite beliefs’ – Could be useful for analysing Henry VIII’s (and general) avoidance of discussion of physical love in these letters (may be particularly relevant for Henry VIII considering the context of his relationship with Anne Boleyn).

Explicit Commentary

-       Much of our analysis of the pragmatics of these love letters is/will be based on our own ‘explicit commentary’ (p.206) as Thomas addresses, as we can’t ask writers like Henry VIII for example, what it was he actually meant by what he was writing. We have to rely on our own explicit commentary to bring us to conclusions about the meanings of the language used in these letters.

Thomas’ book has proven very useful with regards to finding relevant literature to back up and add to details I have already found in our data. I intend to select a couple more pieces of literature to study in the same way, and will make reference to some of the points they make in my final analysis, which will be displayed in our group presentation.

References

            Thomas, J. (1995), Meaning In Interaction: An Introduction To Pragmatics, New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., pp. 63-4, 120-1, 128, 143, 157, 159, 206

Feedback from our meeting with Alison

Today we met with Alison to clear up concerns we had about whether we should be writing up essays for our findings, and also to get advice on what our next steps are in the process.

Alison informed us that we do not need to write essays, but should be collecting our findings to use in our upcoming presentation. She did say that it didn't matter if some group members have already started writing an essay as this can help with working out what to put in the presentation.

She also brought up some concerns of her own that Jordyn's topic of pragmatics may be difficult as pragmatics is usually concerned with speech. She reccommended a book to look at: Meaing in Interaction by Jenny Thomas, as this may be useful.

One thing that Alison highlighted we need to do is cover ethical issues by anonomysing all the letters by replacing names with initials and/or false names.

Our next step is to plan how we are going to organise our presentation. We need to choose whether we are going to read from a script or speak more informally, and how we are going to take turns in speaking.

Lexical analysis findings...

Some of my findings after analysing the lexis in our love letters...

After dividing our discourse analysis between us, I have been assigned Lexis as my primary area of focus. I have no doubt that our collection of love letters will be rich with lexical features. In this analysis, I will explore and offer reasoning as to why these lexical devises have been used within the love letters - to come to a conclusion regarding the similarities and differences within the collection. Ruiz (2003) explains how “Love expression in letters differs as far as such parameters as the stage of relationship, intimate distance between the correspondents and the intensity of their emotional states, their gender, age, and social status...” (p220) and it is evident that these factors will prove prevalent within these letters.

The first letter was written by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn whilst he was still married to his first wife Catherine of Aragon during the late 1520s. According to the book “Letters from Great Men”, Henry was ‘Obsessed with Anne.’ (p7) The second, taken from the same book, was an unsent letter written by Ludwig Van Beethoven to one of his many lovers. Referring back to the book from which it was sourced, ‘three passionate unsent love letters were found among Beethoven’s papers after his death, addressed to his ‘Immortal Beloved’’ (p56). However, the identity of this woman was never ‘conclusively established.’ (p57) The third letter was written by a young Jewish woman from Manchester whilst on holiday in Israel to her companion back in London in 1966. The third is a note from a young man to his fiancé, with whom he did not live with, a week before their wedding – written in 1982. The last letter was written in 2012 by a young soldier leaving for Afghanistan to his girlfriend who was staying at home.

Lexis findings...

The type of lexis used is obviously an important area to discuss. The two eldest letters use a lot of archaic lexis, which is expected due to the time at which they were written. For example, in Beethoven’s letter, the word “thine” and “farewell” are noticeably outdated words. Similarly, in Henry VIIIs letter, “fervor” is a word that has slowly become lesser used. The use of latinate lexis, such as “augment” in Henry VIIIs and “continuity” in Beethoven’s also mark the letters with age. This also gives the letter a rather formal tone – thus suggesting that the social etiquette of the time had an effect on the way that correspondents wrote to one another.

The later letters are noticeably less formal. The use of anglo-saxon lexis in all three is prevalent – for example “I have just washed my hair” and “present” rather than “gift” in the 1966 letter create an informal tone, suggesting a less constrained relationship. Likewise, in the letter from 1982, the writer directly asks the reader the simple, rhetorical question “Don’t I write well with this pen”, which again creates a very informal tone – as it creates the idea that the writer is simply writing down his every thought. In the 2012 letter, use of simple anglo-saxon lexis such as “my mom” and “look at our pictures” creates a modern, informal tone.

Superlative findings...

Ruiz explains how correspondents make use of complimenting their reader, upon explaining how: “Verbal compliments or words of appreciation are powerful vehicles of love.” (p223) In the 1982 letter, the reader uses the superlative “loveliest” to describe his fiancé – thus suggesting that he considers no other her equal with regard to loveliness.  Superlatives are used in several of the letters, for example, in Beethoven’s letter, he explains how “Your love made me the happiest and unhappiest at the same time” which is also an example of a contrastive pair. In the letter from 1966, the writer uses the superlative “fondest” to describe her love for the reader. In the 2012 letter, the writer describes the day of his departure as “one of the saddest days of my life.” The usage of superlatives in all of these letters suggests extremity from the writer and creates a forceful voice.

Hyperbole findings...

Ruiz (2003) explains how “Love declarations are overt expressions of the feeling” (p223) and the use of hyperbolic lexis used in most of the letters suggests this to be true. In Henry VIII’s letter, he uses hyperbolic modifiers such as “intolerable” to describe his time apart from Anne Boleyn. Additionally, he describes Anne’s affections as “indissoluble.” In the 2012 letter, the writer uses the phrasal term “one in a million” to describe their relationship. This emotionally loaded phrase voices the writer’s belief that their relationship is extremely special. Beethoven also explains how he “can only live” when he is with his lover – although the reader assumes that this is not completely true, he has used the most dramatic description of how far his love extends by saying that he could simply not exist without it.

Vocatives and Address Terms

‘Terms of address are words or linguistic expressions that speakers use to appeal directly to their addressees.’ (Jucker and Taavitsainen, 2003, p1)  There is a very evident use of vocatives and address terms in all five of the letters. In Henry VIII’s letter, he describes his reader as “My Mistress and My Friend” which is quite a formal address term. He does not use any more address terms throughout, although he does refer to himself as “Your servant and your friend” which is, again, very formal. These formal names do not seem particularly affectionate nor personal – and as Jucker and Taavitsainen suggest, “terms of address may differ according to the formality of the situation” (p1) – therefore one could argue that this is something to do with the social expectations of the time regarding the boundaries of relationships.  

Similarly, Beethoven uses rather formal – and very dramatic – address terms such as “Immortal Beloved” and “Angel.” Beethoven’s address terms are very lyrical, and have quite holy connotations, thus suggesting that he deems his lover as biblical.

On the contrary, the letter from 1982 and 2012 uses far less formal address terms. The letter uses a number of nonsense words such as “Your choo”, “Pooh”, “Woof” and “booby”. Morton (2000) suggests that ‘many terms of endearment used by lovers have origins that defy etymological investigation.’ (p49) These may indeed be names that the couple have created solely for one another. As a pair of friends may have an ‘in-joke’ exclusively between them, lovers may indeed have pet names solely intended to be kept within their relationship.  

In the letter from 2012, the writer refers to his reader as “babe” which is a clipping of the word “baby.” According to Keitlin (2003), ‘lovers of both sexes call each other baby’ (p56). Keitlin refers to the Oedipus complex to explain this. According to Keitlin, ‘In men, calling a beloved baby implies that his love object represents a child he can love in both a maternal and paternal fashion’ (p56) thus suggesting that the writer of this letter wishes to care for his partner in a way that a parent would look after their child.

 The writer of the letter from 1966 uses the word “Darling” before the reader’s name. According to Morton (2000), the term “darling” is the ‘oldest term of endearment in the English Language’ deriving from the word ‘dear’ meaning ‘worthy’ added to the suffix ‘ling.’ (p54) Although the word ‘darling’ is still widely-used, it seems somewhat dated in this letter, thus reflecting the fact that this letter is almost fifty years old.  

Pronouns 

Firstly, Ruiz suggests that, in love letters in general, “There is an extensive use of first-person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we.’” (p227) The use of pronouns in these letters, on the whole, is interesting. In all five of the letters, there is an abundant use of the second person singular pronoun ‘you’ to directly address the reader, creating a direct voice from the writer. Similarly, the use of the first person singular pronoun ‘I’ creates a personal voice. For example, “I am risking my life” in the 2012 letter; “My heart and I surrender themselves” in Henry VIIIs letter; “I’m lonely without you” in the letter from 1982; “I hope you are keeping well” in the letter from 1966; and “I can only live” in Beethoven’s.  

‘We’ is also used. The use of ‘we’ suggests unity – for example in the 2012 letter, the writer says “What we got is one in a million” and “I leave this wonderful place we call home” to indicate their togetherness. Ruiz (2003) goes on to explain how “Men and women spotlight feelings of belonging, bond...the desire to stay together” (p224) which reinforces the notion that lovers may use pronouns to voice their bond.

            Posessive pronouns are also prevalent. For example, the first person possessive pronoun is used in the address terms in four of the five letters. (In Henry VIII’s, “My mistress and my friend”; in the 2012 letter, “my beautiful MJ”; in Beethoven’s, “My Immortal Beloved” and in the 1966 letter, “My darling David”.) This use of the possessive pronoun suggests that the writer sees their reader as a possession of theirs, and that they are committed solely to them. This works the other way, when the use of the second person possessive pronoun is used. For example, in the 1982 letter, the writer identifies himself as “Your choo” as if to give himself up to his correspondent. Similarly, Henry VIII offers himself to his reader when he says “My heart and I surrender themselves into your hands.” He also refers to himself as “your servant and friend” as if to offer himself, in every role, to Anne.

References

·         Jucker, A.H. and Taavitsainen, I. (2003) Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems John Benjamins Publishing

·         Keitlin, S. (2003) The Oedipus Complex: A Philosophical Study Virtualbookworm Publishing

·         Morton, M. (2000) The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex Insomniac Press

·         Ruiz, J. S. (2003) Género, lenguaje y traducción/ Gender, Language and Tradition Valencia: Universitat de València

Analysis of 5 Love letters: Word meanings (collocation, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms)

Henry VIII’s letter:

• As the letter begins with ‘My heart and I surrender’, this collocation of ‘surrender’ and ‘heart’ creates a somewhat clichéd phrase. A cliché’ is formed when a certain collocation is used frequently to convey the same implied meaning, resulting in a shared knowledge being built so that when the collocation is next used, no explanation is needed for its meaning. Clichés like the one used here are uncommon in informal speech, and give a somewhat elevated and formal tone to the letter.
• Word like ‘augment’, ‘diminished’, ‘indissoluble’, and ‘supplicate’ are examples of uncommon synonyms of more readily used words. The writer may have chosen to use these over a more common synonym could have been to again create formality within the letter; a kind of poetic effect.
• When looking at how these are uncommon usages of words, we have to take into context the time in which the letter was written. These words certainly sound more formal when comparing them to the letters from the 21^st Century because we are familiar with most words used in the modern ones since they are still in usage and in fashion. However we can assume that this letter, with its poetic style, was not intended to be read as informal.

Beethoven’s letter:

• Similar to the letter by Henry VIII, unusual collocates like ‘ideas yearn’ and ‘immortal beloved’ create a poetic style that, unlike the cliché need to be thought about to interpret, due to their unconventional and metaphorical usage.
• Beethoven has chosen to use lots of synonyms and antonyms of words associated with happiness e.g. ‘joyfully’, ‘sadly’, ‘miserable’, ‘happiest’, ‘unhappiest’. This communicates the range of emotions that are associated with love, and changing the synonym but conveying the same feelings maintains the emotive imagery throughout the letter without it becoming repetitive.

Marilyn’s letter:

• Again cliché’s are used within this letter, however unlike with the cliché’s used in Henry VIII’s letter, these are a little more common in informal speech, e.g. ‘I miss you so much’ and how she thinks of him a ‘hell of a lot’. These phrases seem to appear alone as a single sentiment as if in attempt to keep up with the form of a love letter whilst also telling of events currently happening.
• This could be because the letter’s purpose is not just to convey loving feelings, but also to provide the addressee with news. Telling of news could be the primary purpose of the piece, so these cliché’s are added to keep in the secondary purpose of a love letter.

Fiancé’s letter:

• Unlike Beethoven’s letter, the writer chooses simpler, very common synonyms over more formal ones, e.g. ‘little’, ‘loveliest’ and ‘peck’. This creates a very informal, almost child-like tone to the letter, taking a much less serious stance than the other four letters. This could possibly be because the writer is not declaring love, or saying goodbye, but their love is already confirmed in the context of the marriage referred to in the letter.
• The use of ‘Snooze Land’ is a collocation that would normally only occur in children’s stories, again giving a child-like informality to the letter. It is interesting to see that feelings of love can be communicated through both very formal language, and also very informal language.
• Again, a cliché is used somewhat playfully in the phrase ‘too lonely for words’. This cliché is formed of a grammatical pattern, in which an emotive adjective can be interchanged within this framework: ‘too [adjective] for words’, to create an effect.

Mat’s letter:

• Mat uses the word ‘leave’ four times in three sentences where he could have chosen to use a synonym for ‘leave’, like Beethoven chooses to use different synonyms for happiness. However this frequent use of the same word creates a repetition that build up the effectiveness and the emotions behind the word. It puts an emphasis on ‘leave’ that makes it clear leaving is a big topic and cause of emotion within the letter.
• ‘So return’ is a very unusual collocation. The use of ‘so’ doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence, and it appears here as an adverb. This uncommon usage could possibly have been used to add a formality and emphasis to the verb ‘return’.
• ‘Time will fly’ and ‘one in a million’ are more examples of clichés, which is something that has appeared in all five letters.

Progress Report

What have we done so far?

• chosen a topic
• picked our texts
• background reading 
• collected resources
• photocopied and distributed texts
• delegated analysis areas 
• annotations/made notes on specific areas in texts 
• started to develop into written essays 

What do we intend to do next?

• finalise our findings and combine them into our portfolio with a chapter allocated to each topic
• this portfolio is to be used in our final presentation
• start getting together ideas for final presentation (ask Alison about this in meeting 6/11/12)

My Analysis of 5 Love Letters: Pragmatics

            I have taken the five love letters our group has gathered, and analysed them as thoroughly as I can in terms of their pragmatics, that is, what notions/ ideals about love and relationships, and more specifically, love letters themselves, are presented in the language used by the writers. I have found a number of patterns and interesting features, as noted below.

N.B:  Whilst conducting my analysis, I found that my findings overlapped somewhat with things Meg may have noticed for lexis, and Lauren for Social context. In the notes below, I have tried not to include these. When it comes to comparing findings and readying them for presentation, we can combine all of our findings and condense any points that appear in more than one topic.

• ·      Love letters from present day or recent decades (the 80s) include some features which are typical of older love letter writing conventions, which suggests that, as love letter writing is not such a common thing today, writers look for help from past examples to give them a guideline. In the letter from the 1980s, the writer had included a sender’s address in the top corner, even though he probably posted the letter through the receiver’s door himself (given the context). Mat’s present day love letter features phrase ‘look upon the stars   and know that I am looking back doing the same wherever I’ll be’ – suggests influence of older romantic writing/romantic films as star-gazing isn’t a common pastime for young couples today. This is the kind of reference Beethoven might have used.     

• ·      There is little to no mention of physical love in any of the letters (only reference being ‘see you in a minute for my peck’), the pragmatics of this being that talk of physical love isn’t (generally speaking) a feature of love letters.

• ·      The letters from M (60s) and Mt (present) are the only ones which reference events/people outside of the relationship. M says ‘hope everyone is well’ and ‘maybe I will send… [my parents]… a telegram]’ and Mt says ‘keep tabs with my mom’. M’s letter is also rather like a postcard/diary entry – she spends much of it talking about things she’s done, whilst Mt spends some of his letter referencing war in Afghanistan. Pragmatics of this: That more modern couples have a more practical attitude to ‘courting’ than love letter writers of the past. Henry and Beethoven’s letters have one theme only – themselves and their lovers. Love letters of the past sound much more self-involved, as if the lovers are the only ones who exist.

• -       Following on from this idea, M’s 1960s letter suggests a more realistic, level-headed view of love. She says things like ‘oh it was a great laugh’ of her holiday, showing she’s still able to have fun without her significant other. All four other letters give the impression happiness is hard or impossible without lover, eg. Mt: ‘we both know how hard this will be’, Beethoven: ‘I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all’ and Henry: ‘the anguish of absence is so great’. The inclusion of such declarations of sorrow suggests another key feature of love letters is the expression of sorrow at separation from the recipient. The writer of the 1980s love letter also expresses sadness: ‘I'm too lonely for words’, though this may have been written to purposely mimic style of older love letters (suggested by the fact this line appears next to the more comedic ‘I'm going to snooze land’, and that the lovers aren’t far removed from each other).

• -       Theme of practicality in modern is continued in Mt’s present day letter: ‘I leave on this mission to try and make a difference in this world, knowing full well that I am risking my life doing so’ and ‘no matter what unfolds for us, know I loved you every single second we spent together’ (both emphasising fact they may never be reunited). Pragmatics: Many modern day love letters are written by soldiers, so we could assume that many will express harsher realities than the love letters of eg. Beethoven (although Beethoven and Henry are both separated from their loves, they don’t focus on the negative external forces behind their separation).

• ·      One of the general pragmatics of writing a love letter at all is that the writer is hoping to remind the recipient of their existence and maintain the relationship they have in the only way they really can when separated for a long time. As a result, most of these love letters suggest the writer is looking for reassurance that the recipient still loves them, or providing reassurance for the recipient eg.:

- ‘please don’t give up on us even if times get hard, please know I won’t let go, I won’t give up on us’ (present day)

- ‘I hope the same from you’ (1500s)

- ‘never doubt the faithfullest heart of your beloved’ (1700/1800s)

Henry talks of providing Anne with bracelets featuring his picture, further suggesting the need to remind their loved-ones of their relationship.

• ·      Emphasis on faithfulness a feature of all five love letters.

• ·      Henry, Beethoven and Mt all make references to the celestial, suggesting their love is something ‘out of this world’. The fact these letters are all from very separate eras also implies that the celestial is something which has always had romantic connotations, and probably always featured quite heavily as a reference in love letters.

I have attached below my annotated copies of the love letters, which feature a few more minor points I picked up on and demonstrate my workings. As we proceed with our project, I will condense the findings outlined above, to create a concise outline of the pragmatic features of love letters from different eras, how they differ, and any similarities they share.

Preparation for Grammar analysis

Below is a run down of what preparation I completed before writing up the notes on my field of research, grammar.

The first step I took was to print off and photocopy the different pieces of text that we intended to use. I then numbered each text 1-5 so that when I wrote up notes I was able to refer to the text specifically. This method was more to aid myself rather than a group decision. I then began a simple annotation method where I highlighted features and wrote small notes at the side of the text. These notes were then extended in to a more detailed analysis on a seperate piece of paper. This took the format of a table with the headings, "Letter No, Feature, Analysis". From this, I could expand notes on the features which were interesting and/or useful to our project.

Before I began the analysis, I decided it would be beneficial to make a simple list of the aspects of grammar that could potentially arise in the texts. This helped me in the sense that I knew exactly what to look for and was easily able to identify features of grammar. It also ensured that I would not analyse aspects that perhaps somebody else in the group was researching. The sub-sections that I came up with were:

·         Verbs (Tenses, infinitives, base forms, modals, primary auxiliaries…)

·         Adverbs (of time, place and manner. Note that these often end in ‘ly’)

·         Nouns (Abstract, proper, common…)

·         Pronouns (Personal, possessive, interrogative, relative, demonstrative…)

·         Adjectives

·         Determiners (the definite and indefinite articles, quantifiers…)

·         Prepositions

I also looked at punctuation and Standard English although do not discuss these in great detail.

During annotation, I found other features which could be interesting to discuss but unfortunately, they came under the category of something else, for example, Lexis so I did not elaborate these ideas.

After I had done this preparation, I began to write up my findings. These findings will be on the blog in due course.

Sourcing outside reading

After swapping all of our letters with each other, it seemed sensible to source some outside reading in preparation for  my discourse analysis (with regard to lexis.) Here are some good quotes that I found during my background reading...

Ruiz (2003) explains how “Love expression in letters differs as far as such parameters as the stage of relationship, intimate distance between the correspondents and the intensity of their emotional states, their gender, age, and social status...” (p220)

 

“Verbal compliments or words of appreciation are powerful vehicles of love.” (p223)  

 

“Love declarations are overt expressions of the feeling” (p223)

 

“There is an extensive use of first-person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we.’” (p227)

 

Men and women spotlight feelings of belonging, bond...the desire to stay together” (p224)

 

* 

 

Jucker and Taavitsainen (2003) ‘Terms of address are words or linguistic expressions that speakers use to appeal directly to their addressees.’ ( p1)   

 

“terms of address may differ according to the formality of the situation” (p1)

 

* 

 

Morton (2000) ‘many terms of endearment used by lovers have origins that defy etymological investigation.’ (p49)

 

According to Morton (2000), the term “darling” is the ‘oldest term of endearment in the English Language’ deriving from the word ‘dear’ meaning ‘worthy’ added to the suffix ‘ling.’ (p54)

 

 * 

 

Keitlin (2003), ‘lovers of both sexes call each other baby’ (p56)

 

‘In men, calling a beloved baby implies that his love object represents a child he can love in both a maternal and paternal fashion’ (p56)

 

References

·         Jucker, A.H. and Taavitsainen, I. (2003) Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems John Benjamins Publishing

·         Keitlin, S. (2003) The Oedipus Complex: A Philosophical Study Virtualbookworm Publishing

·         Morton, M. (2000) The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex Insomniac Press

·         Ruiz, J. S. (2003) Género, lenguaje y traducción/ Gender, Language and Tradition Valencia: Universitat de València

Problems with topic for analysis

In our last meeting, we assigned each group member specific areas of analysis to focus on when looking at the love letters. The topic that I (Olivia) was assigned was Phonology, which I assumed would involve good analysis of alliteration and certain sounds used to create effect (e.g. fricatives, plosives, voiced/unvoiced consonants). However after annotating the five letters, I found very limited content that could be applied to a study of phonology, especially when comparing and contrasting the time periods of the different texts.

The next step I took was to inform my group that I was having problems, and although we were unable to arrange an emergency meeting I was reassured that support would always be available by contacting each other, and Meg suggested that I take a sub-category of Lexis, as she was finding her topic covered many areas. I have decided to read over all of the letters again thoroughly, and see if any topics that have not been covered by my other group members show up any interesting patterns and/or contrasts.