Formulaic language in an early modern Scottish community of practice: The Stewart Erskine correspondence, 1600–1644

Elder, Claire M. (2026) Formulaic language in an early modern Scottish community of practice: The Stewart Erskine correspondence, 1600–1644. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis investigates an early modern Scottish epistolary Community of Practice (CoP), analysing how its members established and maintained social relationships through the shared communicative resource of formulaic language. The materials are drawn from the Papers of the Family of Erskine of Alva, held at the National Library of Scotland and National Records of Scotland. The dataset comprises 183 letters sent or received between 1600 and 1644 within the correspondence network of Marie Stewart, countess of Mar, and her husband, John Erskine, 2nd earl of Mar. By adopting the dual designation Stewart-Erskine letters, the thesis intentionally centres Marie Stewart and brings her into greater scholarly visibility.

The thesis argues that the correspondents whose ideologies, confessions, social positions, and linguistic practices both aligned and diverged, formed a cohesive and functional multilingual CoP. It demonstrates that the strategic use of formulaic language was central to effective communication within the CoP, which operated against a background of profound religious, political, and linguistic upheaval. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) theory of dialogism, the thesis treats formulae as remembered linguistic ‘chunks’ through which influence, alignment, and shared practice can be traced. In doing so, it highlights the communicative adaptability of the Stewart–Erskine CoP and contributes to broader understanding of how formulaic language reflects ideological and social dynamics in early modern Scotland.

Chapter 1 introduces the Stewart-Erskine correspondents, outlines the research questions, and contextualises the materials. It also provides a reader apparatus that overviews the StEr CoP members, biographical details, interpersonal relationships, and patterns of correspondence within the corpus. Chapter 2 sets out the interdisciplinary methodological framework, reflecting the need to situate historical documents within their conditions of production and reception. It reviews relevant work in historical pragmatics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, manuscript studies, and social history, and establishes a pragmaphilological toolkit combining sociolinguistic variation analysis, discourse analysis, politeness theory, and Magnusson’s (2004) theory of linguistic scripts.

Continuing this contextual emphasis, Chapter 3 examines the sociocultural and sociolinguistic environment in which the CoP operated, with particular attention to the complexities of confessional identity, linguistic and cultural contact, and how disruptions, from changes in personal status to the broader upheavals of war, shaped epistolary practice. This contextual grounding provides the interpretive framework necessary for analysing formulaic choice in the chapters that follow.

Chapter 4 addresses Research Question 1 ‘How can we assemble and digitally encode a corpus of the epistolary writings of an early modern Scottish CoP that enables both computational analysis and public access?’ By detailing the workflow used to compile StErCor2, a novel 61,000-token TEI–encoded corpus, and its accompanying sociolinguistic metadata framework stored in an MS Excel workbook, the chapter establishes the empirical foundation on which the subsequent analyses depend.

Chapters 5–7 address Research Question 2: ‘How did members of the StEr CoP use the following three types of formulaic language in their correspondence to construct and negotiate relationships, exert mutual influence, and reflect sociolinguistic identities: (a) religious formulae, (b) epistolary formulae (address forms, subscriptions, and superscriptions), and (c) symbols?’ Each chapter advances the argument by examining these distinct but interrelated components of the CoP’s communicative repertoire in turn.

Chapter 5 demonstrates that the CoP shared a conventionalised repertoire of religious formulae that served pragmatic as well as devotional purposes, enabling community-building across differences of status, gender, and confession. At the same time, the chapter shows how individual patterns of use reveal ideological positioning and divergence within the CoP, underscoring the dialogic nature of formulaic practice.

Chapter 6 extends this argument to epistolary formulae, showing how correspondents employed widely attested conventions through honorifics, kinship terms, evaluative language, and textual layout in their address forms, subscriptions, and superscriptions. The chapter also demonstrates that the flexibility of epistolary formulae allowed writers to balance hierarchy, intimacy, and affect, and to strategically depart from convention to achieve particular communicative aims.

Chapter 7 completes the analysis by turning to graphic symbols, an aspect of formulaic language that has received little sustained attention. Focusing on the fermesse, it shows that symbolic practices formed an integral part of Scottish epistolary culture, extending patterns previously identified mainly in French and English contexts. The chapter argues that such symbols carried relational, affective, and potentially religious meanings, thereby reinforcing the thesis’ central claim that formulaic language in this CoP operated across linguistic, visual, and material domains.

In conclusion, Chapter 8 synthesises the thesis’ overall findings, arguing that religious and epistolary formulae, and symbols, collectively formed a single integrated, multimodal communicative repertoire. It demonstrates that correspondents strategically adapted formulaic language to manage relationships across sociolinguistic contexts and to construct multiple, overlapping identities linked to religious, familial, political, and social affiliations. The use of formulae across nations also reflects engagement with broader early modern epistolary conventions. Finally, the chapter outlines directions for future research and reiterates that a multidisciplinary approach is a productive method for studying early modern correspondence.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant number AH/R012717). Due to copyright issues the accompanying corpus files are not available for viewing.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Funder's Name: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Supervisor's Name: Wiggins, Professor Alison and Kopaczyk-McPherson, Professor Joanna
• Date of Award: 2026
• Embargo Date: 15 June 2039
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-86105
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 14 Jul 2026 13:27
• Last Modified: 14 Jul 2026 13:27
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.86105
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/86105