Documentary discourse of the eighteenth century: sociolinguistic interpretation

In this article a specific corpus of business writing texts from the 18th century is examined in terms of a power discourse that performs the functions of social construction of the surrounding world. The study of the functioning of documentary discourse involves, first of all, an analysis of the procedures for controlling it. These procedures act as a social context that generates the social meanings of discursive elements. In the article, from among the external procedures of control over discourse classified by Michel Foucault, only prohibition procedures are examined which, according to the communicative attitude and sociocultural predestination, endow certain linguistic means of documentary discourse with social meanings.

In particular, discursive restrictions introduced through a taboo on an object of speech (one of the common exclusion procedures), predetermine a new sociocultural content of the terms of social power (in particular, the term imperator). Another control procedure, the ritual of circumstances, can impose restrictions on verbal behavior and related nonverbal actions. As a result, the meaning of linguistic means used in the formulas of business texts changes. The privileged or exclusive right of the speaker in the discourse of power creates conditions for discursive competence of representatives of authority, who always adequately recognize the changed semantic content of key linguistic means in the current sociocultural context.

Following V. E. Chernyavskaya and S. T. Nefyodov, our analysis of the formation of social meanings within the context as a constructed category provides for a distinction between the concepts of context of influence and context of perception.