18th Century Text Analysis

Link to text: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/texts/cook/1700s2/1700s2.html

This text, from the 18^th century, is an informative text aimed at housemaids. It clearly outlines the method that should be used to remove insects from the house. As such, the text generally consists of complex sentences, polysyllabic words and an overall high register. Throughout the text, there are examples of archaic language and terminology such as ‘Earthen-pan’ (a large pot made of earth/clay) and ‘mixt’ (the past tense of mix). There are also language features that are a characteristic of the time such as the fact that all nouns are capitalised and the use of the archaic ‘s’ throughout the text. There are some other examples of words used to describe objects from the time, that would not be used today such as ‘Chaffindish’ (an upper class serving dish), ‘Brimstone’ (used to start fires as it burns better than charcoal) and ‘boiling Lee’ (a substance used for cleaning).

There are examples throughout this text that, today, would be considered grammatically incorrect. Some such examples include ‘Don't open the door under six hours’ (don't open the door until six hours have passed), ‘Shut your door close’ (close your door), ‘it will take away your breath’ (it will take your breath away) and ‘it will be well’ (it would be beneficial). In these examples, the words used in the modern day equivalents are generally present but in a different order. There are other examples of where the spellings of words have changed. Examples such as ‘effectual’ (effective), ‘buggs’ (bugs), ‘mixt’ (mixed) and ‘finis’ (finish).

Interestingly, there are also some more complex examples of language change that have occurred. The first example is of semantic shift. This is where a word has changed in meaning. The word ‘about’ has gone through this process from meaning around (an area) to mean a preposition indicating an estimation or a subject matter. The word ‘anoint’ has gone through the process of narrowing. It was used in the text to mean ‘wipe clean’ but now it has changed in meaning to smear/rub and is more commonly used regarding a religious ceremony. These points highlights the language change that has occurred over the course of 250 years.


Graphologically, the text utilises a clear typeface with italic writing used for the title of each paragraph. After the title there is always a bold first letter and the rest of the word is capitalised. This is a characteristic of texts from this time and is sometimes still found in books today. All the nouns throughout the text are also capitalised (which today would be considered incorrect as we would only capitalise proper nouns and the starts of sentences).