Variatie, conventies en verandering - Zeventiende- en achttiende-eeuwse buitgemaakte brieven onder de loep

This contribution focuses on the historical sociolinguistic research conducted within the Brieven als Buit/Letters as Loot programme at Leiden University (www.brievenalsbuit.nl). At the core of this research are seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch private letters, confiscated by the English during times of warfare. The socio-historical linguistic value of these letters, kept in the National Archives (Kew, UK), will be shown when discussing the autograph status of texts, and examining the specific cases of formulaic language and of forms of address. These three issues are illustrated by presenting two seventeenth-century letters sent from New Netherlands shortly after the historic event of the English taking over. Furthermore, the importance of a reliable electronic corpus, built according to LIP (the Leiden Identification Procedure), will come to the fore. Exploring such a corpus results in unprecedented insights into variation, conventions and in particular, changes of both formulae and forms of address.