Conditional Practice in Haslehurst’s The Family Friend (1814)

Abstract

This article examines if-sentences in Priscilla Haslehurst’s The Family Friend (1814) as a case study of women’s recipe writing within instructive prose. Combining Sweetser’s functional domains with Martin and White’s Appraisal framework, it analyses both what conditionals do and how forcefully they are expressed. Using targeted CasualConc searches and manual checking, 109 conditionals were identified: 88 content and 21 speech-act tokens, with no epistemic uses, an absence that fits the procedural logic of the genre. Content if-clauses mainly realise Engagement as entertain, shifting to disclaim or proclaim in categorical contexts, while Graduation operates through modals, thresholds, and quantification. Overall, the analysis shows a clear functional division: content clauses organise action and outcome, whereas speech-act clauses manage interpersonal stance, offering a replicable model for comparison across women’s instructive texts.