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"The Sociopragmatics of Stance" by Peter J. Grund is a research monograph that explores the expression of stance in the witness depositions from the Salem witch trials. The book combines historical sociolinguistics and the study of stance to provide insight into how stance is expressed in early modern text. It emphasizes the role of context, both textual and social, in understanding and interpreting stance. The analysis is based on 457 witness depositions and covers three functional domains: evaluation, intensification, and evidentiality. The book also discusses the challenges of studying stance in historical texts and suggests areas for further research. [Extracted from the article]

The American Puritan layman Samuel Sewall (d. 1730) is perhaps best known as a diarist and as a repentant judge in the Salem witchcraft trials. But he was also the author of Phaenomena quaedam apocalyptica (first edition 1697), a work which argued that the New Jerusalem would arise in Mexico City. Sewall's unusual millennial doctrine may seem undeserving of study, for no other American Puritan thought that the New Jerusalem would first appear in Mexico City or anywhere else in New Spain. Yet when properly contextualized, the Mexican millennium is worth investigating for two reasons. First, it accentuates what the American Puritan millenarian mainstream, best exemplified by John Cotton, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather, believed about the coming kingdom. Second, the Mexican millennium, like the mainstream position, challenges the academic claim that American Puritan millenarians characteristically believed that they were destined to inaugurate the millennial kingdom in New England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]