Popular Entertainment

Exploring the 18th century through language analysis of

entertainment extracts.

The Extract

BackgroundSaid to be taller than Goliath, this Swedish giant was 'exhibited' in a London glass shop in 1742. The advertisement shown here describes him as giving 'amazing satisfaction to all who see him'. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, human 'curiosities' were exhibited for the entertainment of the general public. The exhibits included people with physical disabilities or those from overseas who were thought to look 'different' or 'exotic.This highlights how exploration of new worlds and different cultures has allowed curiosity to develop. The chance to see such marvels and indifferent people highlights an increasing ability for people to communicate and travel.

Audience, Purpose, Genre

Audience1 shilling would have equated to 12 pence. day labourers only earned 18 pence at the most a day. Suggests an upper class audience.GenreNewspaper clipping from February 11th 1742, suggests a leisurely lifestyle and the influence of media for advertising slowly beginning to increase.

PurposeThe main purpose would have been to persuade and inform the public of the event, this was done through bold black and white fonting with a tagline ‘the living COLOSSUS, or wonderful GIANT’ nowadays, colour would be used to achieve this effect much more effectively.

Pragmatics

The fact that the giant comes from Sweden shows how Britain's trade links and exploration to new worlds was steadily expanding, giving rise to more opportunities and variety in peoples everyday lives.

Indicates the idea that society during the early 1800’swas still heavily based on Christianity and religion. This would have influenced the language choices, including much more of these religious references in everyday language. It is symbolic of the story David and Goliath which would have been popular amongst the people at that time as many well educated people would have access to the bible and Christian teachings.

Shows how medical advances during the 1700’s had an impact on language (Carl Linnaeus – taxonomy classification system into species)

Language analysis - LexisLEXIS –Prodigy is a Latinate word that, used in this context, indicates an extraordinary thing, an anomaly, a freak or something unusual.Quite old fashioned, instead of ‘prodigy in nature’ we would say ‘freak of nature 'suggests prepositions were not standardised in the same way as today.

LEXIS - Latin Diphthong, (old English Latin alphabet) used in capital letter writing.(9th and 12th century)

LEXIS - contractions suggest different language conventions were used than the ones in use today. Used to replicate the way language is spoken.

LEXIS –

A statue, esp. of a person or god, that is much bigger than life size. Old English origin, possible Roman roots.

Language analysis - Grammar

GRAMMAR - Unusual word order that no longer exists in modern language(verb subject) Using a verb as an adjective to describe how well educated the gentlemen are.

GRAMMAR – the positioning of the adjective ‘famous’ is in the correct position before the noun. Older forms could have described ‘The late Saxon, famous’

GRAMMAR – the modal auxiliary ‘to be’ begins to be standardised during the early modern period.

GRAMMAR – there is a significant absence of full stop punctuation with only 3 in the whole text. They seem to act as paragraph endings rather than sentence endings. Very long sentences of approximately 50 words, compared to average of 15 nowadays.

GRAMMAR – capitalisation still not completely standardised as many words are unnecessarily capitalised.

Semantics

Now known as The Royal exchange, at the centre of London. The placing of the giant would have suggested the spectacle was a must see event right at the heart of London city.Something the public should be proud of, The event marks a cultural significance that conveys the notion of expanding horizons and curiosity in nature and the human species.Not situated in the dirty side streets, but in the open, respectable cross roads of Charing Cross.