Promising Language: Betrothal in Victorian Law and Fiction
Craig, Randall T.![Promising Language: Betrothal in Victorian Law and Fiction](https://support.digitalhusky.com/media/annotations/sorted/289/28957066/CHSBZCOP0328957066.jpg)
Promising Language explores the linguistic and social ramifications of promising, and specifically promising to marry, in Victorian fiction. The concept of the promise--as speech act, as social practice and legal contract, and as structural principle and topos--lies at the intersection of several emergent nineteenth-century discourses: the science of language (notably etymology and philology), utilitarian jurisprudence (especially the freedom ...