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Constructing witches and spells: speech acts and activity types in early modern England.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2000
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Issue number1
Volume1
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)97-116
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In this paper, we highlight the centrality of verbs relating to verbal activities in witchcraft narratives in the Early Modern English period, and focus on speech act verbs used to refer to witches' curses. In the first part, we refer to various classifications of speech act verbs and to Searle's felicity conditions for speech acts, in order to describe the different meanings of verbs such as to curse, and to show how their central meaning has shifted over time. In the second part, we show how the speech act verbs form a structured set, which — in appropriate circumstances — could be used as an interpretative frame to create witchcraft events out of relatively trivial arguments within village communities. Here, we refer to Levinson's notion of activity types as a possible explanatory framework.