"We have in some former bookes told you": the significance of metatext in 17th-century English news.

This contribution examines metatextual comment in seventeenth-century periodical news publications. Periodical news publication was a new genre and those involved in its production had to determine the language they should use in the writing up of such news. In the article I analyze the terminology seventeenth-century news writers themselves adopt in relation to their own publications and the news they are presenting. The analysis focuses both on the frequency and content of editorial metadiscourse between 1620 (the start of periodical news) and 1695 (the expiry of the Licensing Act). The diachronic analysis of frame and endophoric metatextual markers provides insight into editorial aspirations, anxieties, commercial concerns and general attitudes to news discourse.