This study explores a possible change in politeness conventions in Scottish correspondence written between 1570 and 1750. It is hypothesised that longer request sequences, that is, macro-requests, will display a diachronic shift towards a more prominent use of addressee-oriented face-enhancing speech acts as supportive moves, for instance, compliments or thanking, which have been found to be typical of eighteenth-century politeness culture. While the findings show that macro-requests often include moves aimed at maintaining harmony between the correspondents, there is no apparent increase of face-enhancing addressee-oriented harmonising moves during the period under investigation. Instead, writer-oriented support strategies, such as commitments or apologies, prevail in request sequences featuring harmonising moves, thus suggesting continuity in politeness norms. Nevertheless, regarding the choice of individual support strategies, the decline of commitments towards the addressee in the eighteenth century may indicate a change of conventions towards a less deferential style. These findings for Scottish letters offer a first point of reference for future research into macro-request patterns based on a planned cross-varietal, pragmatically annotated corpus of eighteenth-century correspondence.

中文翻译：

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苏格兰字母中请求序列的常规组织 （1570–1750）


本研究探讨了 1570 年至 1750 年间书写的苏格兰通信中礼貌惯例的可能变化。据推测，较长的请求序列，即宏请求，将显示出一种历时性的转变，即更突出地使用面向收件人的面部增强语音行为作为支持性动作，例如，赞美或感谢，这已被发现是 18 世纪礼貌文化的典型特征。虽然研究结果表明，宏观请求通常包括旨在维护通讯员之间和谐的举措，但在调查期间，以面孔为导向的协调举措并没有明显增加。相反，以作者为导向的支持策略，例如承诺或道歉，在以协调动作为特色的请求序列中占主导地位，从而表明礼貌规范的连续性。然而，关于个人支持策略的选择，18 世纪对收件人的承诺的减少可能表明惯例发生了变化，朝着不那么尊重的风格发展。苏格兰书信的这些发现为未来研究宏观请求模式提供了第一个参考点，该模式基于一个有计划的跨品种、实用注释的 18 世纪通信语料库。