Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England

Book excerpt: "Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England" examines various aspects of the witness depositions comprising "An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560 1760" (ETED) on the accompanying CD-ROM.ETED combines modern corpus linguistic methodology and editorial theory, and makes available faithful transcriptions of 905 depositions drawn from manuscripts from different areas of early modern England. The depositions, which total c. 267,000 words, cover testimony by men and women of different ages and social strata. In order to cater to a variety of uses and users, the ETED CD-ROM provides the depositions in five electronic formats (XML, resolved XML, HTML, TXT and PDF), as well as a data retrieval program and a number of support files. The book explores the genre, the socio-historical and legal background, and the language of depositions. Together with the book, ETED constitutes a significant resource for researchers of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics and historical sociolinguistics, and for social and legal historians."