The Official Letter. Remarks on Style and Editing. Count Hernán Núñez’ Letters to the Spanish Dowager Queen, Mariana de Austria
Abstract
Epistolary writing consists of contemporary testimonies
of political and cultural events and linguistic usages and it
is vital to have access to good editions. There are two main
groups of epistolary writing: informal and official letters. This
article focuses on the characteristics of an official letter from
the late 17th century.
There are three basic prerequisites for any kind of written
communication: Purpose, Style and Distinctive character. The
main purpose is to transmit a message that will be read by
several people who might be unknown to the sender and the
letter is often filed in archives. The style of an official letter
is often very elaborate and even if the purpose and style are
basic when analyzing texts every written message has its
own distinctive character that could be seen as stylistic but
not always so like in the case of diplomatic letters where some
parts of the text can be codified.
All these characteristics are dealt with in this article, which
is based on letters that the Spanish ambassador to Sweden in
1671 wrote to the Dowager Queen of Spain.
Publisher
LIR. journal
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2011Author
Söhrman, Ingmar
Keywords
editing
Spanish
official letter
diplomatic letter
epistolary writing
codified
style
orthographic
Publication type
article, peer reviewed scientific
Language
eng