19CSC, ICAMET and the Diachronic Study of Specialized Discourse in Correspondence

This chapter focuses on the need for multidimensional annotation in the study of specialized discourse from a historical point of view. This choice intends to highlight the ways in which our approach may account for features which, while pertaining to the context, rather than the text and co-text in themselves, may have had a crucial impact on linguistic choices as far as the encoder is concerned, and – on the part of the recipient – on the ways in which the message could be decoded. The reason for this is that, of course, both encoding and decoding are culturally-determined processes, the investigation of which cannot exclude factors like generic integrity and conventions, or socially acceptable ways of encoding stance and authority. In particular, in the case of business correspondence, the type of ritualized exchange aimed at ensuring the attainment of business goals is only understood taking into consideration in what ways participants could present themselves and their activity through skilful, constant face-work. Indeed, business transactions may be assumed to rely on the kind of hierarchical discourse in which the deployment of positive and negative politeness strategies is crucial. My contribution also discusses the relationship of 19CSC with other projects currently in progress on Late Modern English, and presents the ‘macrotags’ currently employed in the Bergamo project for the kind of multidimensional annotation mentioned above. The concluding remarks point to some preliminary findings obtained on the basis of such annotation.