Wilt Thou Be Lord of all the World? Modals and Persuasion in Shakespeare

Persuasion is defined as human communication designed to influence the judgements and actions of others (Simons & Jones 2011). The purpose of this research is to analyse the discourse of persuasion in Shakespeare from the perspective of historical pragmatics (Jucker & Taavitsainen 2010), with particular attention to modals employed as part of the strategies. The modals under investigation are proximal and distal central modals, SHALL/SHOULD, WILL/WOULD, CAN/COULD, MAY/MIGHT, MUST, and the contracted form ’LL. The data for the present study is drawn from The Riverside Shakespeare (Evans 1997) and the concordance by Spevack (1968-1980). The corpus includes both cases where the persuasion attempt is successful and unsuccessful.

After defining persuasion in comparison to speech acts, quantitative analysis reveals how frequently the persuader and the persuadee employ a modal regarding each type of modality and speech act. Further analysis shows in what manner the persuader and the persuadee interact with each other in discourse resorting to the following strategies: modality, proximal and distal meanings of the modal, speech act of each utterance including a modal, and use of the same modal or switching modals in interaction.

This research thus clarifies how effectively speakers attempted to persuade others in interactions, shedding light on communication mechanisms in the past.