Constructing and expressing friendship in the letters of Catholic missionaries: a linguistic analysis of the correspondence of New Norcia’s epistolary networks, 1850–1893
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis investigates the role of language and friendship in a collection of letters in Italian and Spanish from the epistolary networks of the Catholic mission of New Norcia, in nineteenth-century Western Australia. Developing an original historical- pragmatic approach to describe the relation between epistolary language and personal relationships, the study demonstrates how the construction and maintenance of friendships were achieved by variations in the linguistic structures expressing the writers subjectivities, social positionings and situational goals. These results offer new insight into the pragmatics of letter writing in Romance languages and into the history of friendship in Western culture.
DOI: 10.26182/fh3s-jk29
Author: De Toni, Francesco
Institution: The University of Western Australia
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Australian Government
OpenAlex ID: W2995055392