Bromhead, Helen
The Reign of Truth and Faith

The book explores the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic expressions in 16th and 17th century English: "verily", "sureley", "forsooth", "by my troth"/"in truth", "by my faith"/"in faith", "methinks"/"I think", "I wot", "I ween", "I suppose", "I trow" and others. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, evidence from texts and collocations, and adducing cultural evidence, the work argues for the existence of a distinct epistemic ethos in 16th and 17th century ways of thinking and speaking, an ethos of truth, faith, and certainty. XI,319 Seiten, gebunden (Topics in English Linguistics; Vol. 62/Mouton de Gruyter 2009)