“Your letter is a deplorable specimen of bad writing”: criticism and authority in responses to reader letters in The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880

Abstract This article examines criticism in answers to reader letters in the 1880 volume of The Girl’s Own Paper. The editors’ responses are notable for regularly including criticism that lacks mitigation and/or contains features likely to increase the damage to the letter writers’ face. I argue that these criticisms constitute a form of institutional facework, serving to establish and defend the editors’ claims to both epistemic and deontic authority. Specifically, the editors position themselves as experts with the epistemic authority to issue firm verdicts, often without explanation or justification. Moreover, they claim the right to determine what kind of behavior is acceptable, an aspect of deontic authority that has not yet been discussed in depth. Finally, the editors use criticism to defend or reclaim authority when they feel it has been called into question. Through these criticisms, the editors construct an asymmetrical relationship with readers characterized by unequal rights to face protection. This data set is thus especially interesting as a source of insight into how participants (often implicitly) make claims about what kind of facework is owed to whom.