Interactive practices and identity construction in W. Wordsworth’s “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (1800): a historical pragmatic scrutiny

Abstract

This article analyses the linguistic practices utilised by W. Wordsworth in the “Preface” to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) in order to construct his own identity as an innovative writer and his interaction with his reader. Within the aims and scope of the new discipline of historical pragmatics, the “Preface” is examined as a dialogic text and several interactive strategies it features are identified and investigated. This historical pragmatic scrutiny demonstrates that these dialogic devices represent the figure of the writer as authoritative and persuasive. Moreover, they also lead his addressee to share the writer’s viewpoint on Romantic poetry and language by means of positive politeness building a common context directly involving the reader.

Keywords

• historical pragmatics
• identity construction
• interactivity and dialogic practices in non-fictional prose
• Late Modern nonfictional discourse
• “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (1800)