On scribal and communicative strategies of witness depositions of witch trials
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18349/MagyarNyelv.2018.2.185Keywords:
witch trials, 16–18th centuries, witness depositions, principle of uniformity, written and communicative contextAbstract
The present paper explores the written and communicative context of witness depositions in 16–18th century Hungarian witch trials. In particular, it tries to account for the prossibilities and ways of scribes’ interventions. As compared to present-day ways of recording statements in court, the historical material reveals a number of essential differences of principle: what can be most clearly detected is the pursuit of explicitation (in a particular amalgam with reliance on situational/thematic context); less clearly revealed are idealisation of language use and omission of peculiarities of oral discourse. All these are related to the particular legal and cultural embeddedness of witch trials.
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