The conventional organisation of request sequences in Scottish letters (1570–1750)

This study explores a possible change in politeness conventions in Scottish correspondence written between 1570 and 1750. It is hypothesised that longer request sequences, that is, macro-requests, will display a diachronic shift towards a more prominent use of addressee-oriented face-enhancing speech acts as supportive moves, for instance, compliments or thanking, which have been found to be typical of eighteenth-century politeness culture. While the findings show that macro-requests often include moves aimed at maintaining harmony between the correspondents, there is no apparent increase of face-enhancing addressee-oriented harmonising moves during the period under investigation. Instead, writer-oriented support strategies, such as commitments or apologies, prevail in request sequences featuring harmonising moves, thus suggesting continuity in politeness norms. Nevertheless, regarding the choice of individual support strategies, the decline of commitments towards the addressee in the eighteenth century may indicate a change of conventions towards a less deferential style. These findings for Scottish letters offer a first point of reference for future research into macro-request patterns based on a planned cross-varietal, pragmatically annotated corpus of eighteenth-century correspondence.