Advice to prospectors (and others). Knowledge dissemination, power and persuasion in Late Modern English emigrants’ guides and correspondence

This contribution analyzes a collection of nineteenth-century documents meant to circulate information to prospective emigrants to Canada and the US, in order to identify the main linguistic strategies employed to make knowledge credible: if sources could be presented as reliable, their persuasive quality would be enhanced. The materials under investigation comprise both published materials and ‘ego documents’, such as correspondence and travelogues meant for private circulation. Building on previous studies of familiar letters (Dossena, 2008, and 2012) and on the construction of reliability in business discourse (Dossena, 2010, and 2014), this study will focus on the importance of knowledge dissemination for the establishment and maintenance of (new) networks based on trust in the information provided.