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This is a ground-breaking study in the historical semantics and
pragmatics of English in the 16th and 17th centuries. It examines
the meaning, use and cultural underpinnings of confident- and
certain-sounding epistemic expressions, such as forsooth, by my
troth and in faith, and first person epistemic phrases, such as I
suppose, I ween and I think. The work supports the hypothesis that
the British Enlightenment and its attendant empiricism brought
about a profound epistemic shift in the 'ways of thinking' and
'ways of speaking' in the English speaking world. In contrast to
the modern ethos of empiricism and doubt, the 16th and 17th
centuries were dominated by an ethos of truth and faith, which
manifests itself in (among other ways) the meanings and usages of
epistemic expressions for certainty and confidence. The study is
firmly based on evidence from texts and collocations in the
writings of the day. The study is conducted using the framework of
the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), an approach to semantic
explanation developed by Cliff Goddard, Anna Wierzbicka and
collaborators. This book can introduce this approach to readers who
are unfamiliar with it, as well as show how it can open new
horizons in historical semantics. The primary audience for this
book is scholars and graduate students in the fields of linguistics
and English studies, especially those interested in historical
semantics, pragmatics and discourse studies. Because of the
strongly cultural focus of the book and its drawing on
non-linguistic literature, it will be of interest to scholars and
graduate students in the fields of cultural history and the history
of ideas, as well as in English studies in a broader sense.
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