Historical Pragmatics

This contribution focuses on one particular politeness formula for requests, fare la carità di 'be so good as to (give)'. The aim of the paper was to reconstruct the meanings and contexts for the usage of fare la carità di in nineteenth-century Italy. The following sources were used: conduct books, dictionaries, novels and diachronic corpora. The essay first looked at politeness metadiscourse and examined the available language advice for requests in CGIO, a corpus of 51 nineteenth-century Italian conduct books. However, as there is none available for fare la carità di, three nineteenth-century dictionaries were consulted. These findings from the metadiscourse were then read against those from a qualitative analysis covering all the examples found in two of the most influential novels of that period, Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi, 'The Betrothed', 1840, and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, 1883. Finally, quantitative data from the historical corpora DiaCORIS and MIDIA were provided. This combined analysis (using metadiscourse alongside qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative data) produced the following results: the formula is used in two contexts, to make a (sometimes forceful) request and to beg for a handout. Both appear in roughly equal proportions until the end of World War II. After that, fare la carità di disappears from DiaCORIS. The paper tentatively concludes that the absence of the formula from the advice on requests in conduct books may be partly explained by its use as a specialised marker for alms-seeking, given that conduct books fiercely criticise almsgiving to the undeserving poor.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the different methods that the specialized discourse community of the 17th century used to spread the news about the many activities then taking place and the discoveries being made by its members. It will be shown that the communicative role of early scientists was not limited to the fulfilment of goals linked to socialization and solidarity, but also included the reform of existing means of discourse and the development of new ones. Indeed, the propagation of discourse conveying new information about specialized facts or events to a social group sharing intellectual and professional interests implied the adoption of various textual forms, each with its own specific pragmatic aim so as to carry out different communicative functions and meet the expectations of a large number of non-homogenous addressees.

This book offers one of the first empirical studies of change in Irish English in the period 1700-1900, during which Ireland became overwhelmingly English-speaking. Using data from a corpus of emigrant letters, the aim of the book is to fully exploit available written evidence for earlier Irish English in order to empirically trace the use of various linguistic features in different historical contexts and over time. The studies presented in the book are based on the analysis of data contained in CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, which provides larger amounts of more vernacular data from a longer timespan than hitherto possible. The book analyses features that to date have remained neglected in the literature on Irish English and it discusses how the survival of the pragmatic mode has resulted in the preservation of certain Irish English features. The volume deals, for example, with discourse-pragmatic markers such as sure, so, like and anyway/anyhow, deictic forms such as adverbials (here, there, this, and that) and pronominal forms (with a focus on we), and embedded inversion. The value of this type of material for linguistic analysis is highlighted throughout the volume.

The book focuses on Irish English, an important contributor to many overseas varieties of English.

Readers will receive a thorough study of historical Irish English data derived from corpus-analytic approaches. They will be able to use it for independent study or as part of taught classes. The book will appeal to academics and postgraduate students working in the areas of Varieties of English, English as a World language, English as an International Language, Dialectology, English Language history, Corpus Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, etc. Historians (particularly those interested in Irish Studies, Emigration, Family History, New World history etc.) will also find valuable material in the book.

A book of this type will also be useful in third level education teaching, as part of complementary reading lists in modules related to Varieties of English around the World, History of English, Irish History (and Irish Studies) and History of Migration. Irish secondary school teachers should also find it interesting as a complement to their teaching of Irish History.

Ausgehend von der methodischen Frage, auf welche Weise kognitive Ansätze der Diskursforschung auf historische Texte Anwendung finden können, rekonstruiert der Vortrag grammatische Muster zur Etablierung von Textwelten im Mittelhochdeutschen. Auf der theoretischen Grundlage der Text-Welt-Theorie (Werth 1999) und der théorie des espaces mentaux (Fauconnier 1984) wird das exemplarisch für den Bereich der Tempora durchgeführt.

The aim of this paper is to investigate discourse strategies of outgroup construction in the Alfredian period (late ninth century), by using critical discourse analysis and testing its relevance for the Anglo-Saxon data. The study focuses on the Viking outgroup and its presentation in the texts of the period. The analysis also tackles earlier and later sources containing the episodes of the first encounter with the unwelcome “Other” to trace typological features of outgroup construction in medieval political discourse. The genres that are taken into account are historical writings and legislation in Anglo-Latin and Old English. It is postulated that the Alfredian texts are commissioned by the political elite—the West Saxon kingship—and produced by the symbolic elite—writers, chroniclers, copyists, the clergy more generally, with the Alfredian circle being reconstructed as a “Community of Practice” with a distinct political, cultural, and discourse agenda. The Viking raids of the period provide a “bid for counter-power,” to which the elites have to react both militarily and ideologically. The ideologies of the Anglo-Saxon elites are analyzed at the discourse level, concentrating on the strategies of outgroup derogation, e.g., criminalization of the Vikings in the chronicles. It is concluded that the chronicles can be analyzed as analogous to modern press, that they were produced and circulated to shape “public opinion” of politically and economically prominent social groups.

The study examines tense variation in complement and subject clauses subordinate to and co-temporal with matrix past tense verbs in Russian. The semantics of the matrix verb is commonly named as one of the major factors that govern tense choice in complement and subject clauses: verbs of speech are said to exclusively license present tense in embedded clauses; existential verbs, on the other hand, are said to block present tense; whereas verbs of perception are said to allow both past and present tense, cf. Vanja skazal, čto Maša xorošo vygljadit ‘Vanya said that Masha looked [pres] great’ vs. Slučalos’, čto Maša vygljadela xorošo ‘It happened (there were times) that Masha looked [past] great’ vs. Vanja videl, čto Maša xorošo vygljadit / vygljadela ‘Vanya saw that Masha looked [pres/past] great’. However, despite a considerable body of research on the topic, a comprehensive investigation of tense distribution across various semantic classes of matrix verbs has not yet been undertaken. This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of tense distribution in complement and subject clauses across five semantic
classes of the matrix verb: speech, mental, emotion, perception, and existential. Statistical analysis revealed the following probabilistic hierarchy of licensing past tense: existential verbs (97 %) > verbs
of perception + complementizer kak (70 %) > verbs of perception + complementizer čto (41 %) > mental verbs (9 %) > verbs of speech (1 %). This hierarchy rectifies our notion of tense choice in complement and subject clauses in Russian. It is also notable for its high correspondence with the interclausal bondedness hierarchy maintained in typological studies. The suggested isomorphism of the two hierarchies implies that tense appears to be a probabilistic marker of interclausal bondedness, with the absolute tense encoding closer and the relative looser relations.

В работе исследуется вариативность глагольных временных форм в сентенциальных актантах (СА), подчиненных глаголу в прошедшем времени и выражающих одновременный таксис с матричной клаузой. Одним из решающих факторов, влияющих на выбор временной формы, в литературе называется обычно принадлежность матричного глагола к тому или иному семантическому классу. В частности, считается, что глаголы речи не терпят прошедшего времени в СА, бытийные глаголы не терпят настоящего времени, а глаголы восприятия допускают как настоящее, так и прошедшее время, ср. Ваня сказал, что Маша хорошо выглядит, Случалось, что Маша выглядела хорошо, но Ваня видел, что Маша хорошо выглядит / выглядела. Однако, несмотря на значительную историю вопроса, обширного систематического исследования дистрибуции временных форм в зависимости от класса матричного глагола до сих пор не существует. В работе проводится корпусный анализ употребления временных форм в СА матричных предикатов, относящихся к пяти семантическим классам: глаголов речи, мысли, эмоций, восприятия (с союзами что и как) и бытийных глаголов. Статистический анализ выявил следующую вероятностную иерархию лицензирования претеритных форм: бытийные глаголы (97 %) > глаголы восприятия + как (70 %) > глаголы восприятия  +  что (41 %) > глаголы эмоций (20 %) > глаголы мысли (9 %) > глаголы речи (1 %). Выявленная иерархия дополняет и уточняет существующие представления о выборе временной формы в СА в русском языке и примечательно совпадает с иерархией синтаксической и семантической связанности (interclausal bondedness), установленной в типологических исследованиях. Изоморфизм двух иерархий влечет за собой вывод о том, что граммема времени является вероятностным маркером связанности: абсолютное время с большой вероятностью кодирует более тесные межклаузальные связи, а относительное — более слабые.

"In this paper I revisit the framework of pragmaphilology – one of the basic subdisciplines of historical pragmatics, as originally defined by Jacobs and Jucker (1995). In that programmatic volume on historical pragmatics, pragmaphilology was distinguished from diachronic pragmatics and delineated as a scholarly inquiry which reaches beyond the traditional structural interests of historical linguists. According to Jacobs and Jucker (1995: 11), "[p]ragmaphilology goes one step further and describes the contextual aspects of historical texts, including the addressers and addressees, their social and personal relationship, the physical and social setting of text production and text reception, and the goal(s) of the text". Thus, in that first major volume on historical pragmatics, the section on pragmaphilology included contributions on medieval textual reception, on punctuation in renaissance literature, on multilingualism, on wills, on early grammars and grammarians, and on communicative clues in stylistic properties of medieval poetry.
Recently, however, it seems that the application of the term "pragmaphilology" has developed in a new direction. The recent volume which aims to present the current state of the field of historical pragmatics (Jucker and Taavitsainen (eds.) 2010), has a section entitled "Pragmaphilology" with contributions on Chaucer's and Shakespeare's language only. This appropriation of the label implies that the subdiscipline deals with literary language and its pragmatic aspects. Therefore, the present paper aims to clarify the boundaries of this subfield of pragmatics by analyzing the contents and scope of the contributions to Journal of Historical Pragmatics, which is the most influential outlet for historical pragmatic inquiries, since its inception till the present day (2000-2012). I will also back up this analysis with the overview of how the term "pragmaphilology" has been applied in selected recent monographs in the field.

References:
Journal of Historical Pragmatics. 2000-2012. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jucker, A.H. 1995. Historical pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jucker, A.H. and I. Taavitsainen (eds.) 2010. Historical pragmatics. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton."

This article employs a pragmatic linguistic methodology to examine the verbal conflict in the so-called “Quarrel of the Queens” episode from the Nibelung Legend of Middle High German and Old Norse literature. Völsungasaga, Þiðreks saga af Bern, and Das Nibelungenlied portray the quarrel in sufficient detail to permit a comparative assessment of strategies of verbal conflict.

For An updated and improved version of this article, see chapter two of my recent book Discourse in Old Norse Literature, available in print and digital form on Amazon and through the publisher, Boydell & Brewer.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Discourse-Old-Norse-Literature-Studies/dp/1843845970/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3THG7CF2A8QTQ&keywords=discourse+in+old+norse&qid=1646413314&sprefix=discourse+in+old+norse%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-1

B&B: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843845973/discourse-in-old-norse-literature/

The research aim of this thesis is to attempt to answer several interlinking research questions concerning function of runic inscriptions pre-600AD.
The primary questions are: what are the functions of the early Anglo-Saxon runic script before c.600AD? What specifically is the communicative function of the inscriptions: what are the inscriptions communicating about, and how? The secondary questions, dealt with in less detail in this thesis, are: What is the communicative environment pre-c.600AD and can we reconstruct it with our data? Is there a relationship between textuality and materiality?

The findings of this thesis challenge our notion of what the act of ‘reading’ is, and by challenging our ideas of function and communication, we can hypothesise a concept of a communicative act suitable for pre-c.600AD culture, taking away our twenty-first century preconceptions of function and how much they rely on our ideas of ‘reading’. Through examining the runic text and the rune-bearing object, it appears that the act of communication was often composite, ‘made up of several things’- multimodal and multi-sensory, hugely varied in communicative domains, styles, and functions. The rune-bearing object appears to be considered when choosing a material to carry the message, as well as be an integral part of the message in some instances. The functions of runic inscriptions, both socio-culturally and communicatively, before c.600AD are primarily to denote ownership and personalisation, with alternate functions such as commemoration and private communication also present.
Likely designed to be handled in the process of being read, by taking away our ideas of reading left to right in a straight line with text viewable 100% of the time, we can hypothesise a wider range of functions of the inscriptions. This corpus gives us just a glimpse of the communicative variety of the ‘Dark Ages’ and further research will illuminate, in time, much more about the functions of writing pre-c.600AD.

Published in Journal of Historical Pragmatics 7 (2006):73-88. Abstract: The joint sonnet of the two lovers-to-be at the Capulet feast towards the end of the first act is rightly regarded as the dramatic and poetic climax of the first part of the play. Yet it constitutes, from an interactional point of view, merely a first move and the declarations of love proper occur only later in the orchard scene of the second act. This article explores the complex negotiations that precede the actual confessions of love and investigates how Shakespeare modified his rather simplistic source text, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562), in order to exploit the full interactional and dramatic potential of the situation.

・SUMMARY
In this paper, I trace the origin and historical vagaries of the term pragmatics from Morris' and Carnap's development of the notion down to its place in the work of John Austin, a leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy and a key figure in contemporary philosophy of natural language. First, the origin of the term pragmatics will be briefly summarized, in order to indicate some usages of the term that are divergent from the usage in this article. Secondly, we will review some definitions of the field, which will serve to indicate the rough scope of linguistic pragmatics. Thirdly, some reasons for the our interest in this field will be explained, and we finally will illustrate some basic kinds of pragmatic phenomena. Using a method to study performative utterances and the theory of speech acts, I provide some indications about the scope of linguistic pragmatics, situating it within three major philosophical systems —those of Austin, Grice, and Searle— and delineating its development from one system to the next. In passing, some analytical notions that are useful as a background will be introduced. Ultimately, my comparison of their systems reveals that the concept of the pragmatics, however specific its role in each system, remains linked to a communicative strategy.

・RÉSUMÉ
L'objectif de cet article est tout d'abord de montrer le réseau des contraintes conceptuelles dans lequel l'acte de langage se déroule. Je vais tout d'abord retracer l'origine et l'arrière-plan historique de la notion de pragmatique, telle qu'elle a été élaborée par Morris et Carnap, jusqu'aux travaux de John Austin, principal représentant de la philosophie contemporaine du langage ordinaire ou naturel. Dans un premier temps, l'origine de la pragmatique sera brièvement récapitulée, afin de faire apparaître quelques utilisations de ce terme qui diffèrent de celles que nous retenons dans notre article. Nous passerons ensuite en revue les définitions de ce champ pragmatique proposées par certains auteurs. Nous expliquerons enfin pour quelles raisons cette discipline nous intéresse et nous illustrerons les aspects essentiels des phénomènes pragmatiques. En utilisant la méthode d'approche de l'énonciation performative et la théorie des actes de langage, je ne présenterai que les visées essentielles de la pragmatique linguistique, au travers notamment de trois systèmes philosophiques (Austin, Grice, Searle), et je retracerai brièvement l'évolution des critères méthodologiques d'un système à un autre. Chemin faisant, un certain nombre de notions analytiques seront introduites. La comparaison des systèmes fera en fin de compte apparaître que le concept de pragmatique est inséparable des intentions contingentes des locuteurs et de leurs stratégies de communication.

Il saggio si rivolge a chiunque voglia esplorare un campo di ricerca affascinante e tuttora poco noto in Italia: la (s)cortesia storica. Preceduto da un’introduzione teorica, in cui si presentano le innovazioni più recenti nei campi della pragmatica storica e della pragmatica della (s)cortesia, lo studio si impernia su una trasformazione chiave, vale a dire la progressiva erosione del cerimoniale di antico regime e la nascita della cortesia contemporanea nell'Ottocento, che viene esaminata sia dall'ottica prescrittiva dei trattati comportamentali, sia attraverso rappresentazioni fittizie della prassi (s)cortese storica. Si seguono le tracce di questa trasformazione in tre generi letterari “orali” – il dialogo teorico, il teatro e il romanzo – di autori (Castiglione, Bibbiena, Ariosto, Goldoni, Manzoni e Collodi) che usano gli scambi dialogici fittizi o per contestare le norme vigenti o per promuoverne delle alternative.

By employing recent work done in the discipline of Pragmatics (Historical Pragmatics; (Im)politeness studies), this paper aims to sketch out a typology and a description of the dynamics of verbal abuse in Homer. The metalanguage of verbal abuse, that is, how the narrator and the characters of the poems ‘talk about’ and categorize this phenomenon, will also be analyzed.

Table of contents
§ 1 Homeric verbal abuse in recent studies  ~  § 2 Historical Pragmatics and the ‘pragmatic space’ of verbal abuse  ~  § 3 (Im)politeness theory  ~  § 4 Types of verbal abuse in Homer (I): flyting (intercommunal verbal abuse)  ~  § 5 Is verbal abuse ‘cooperative’ ?  ~  § 6 Types of verbal abuse in Homer (II): the Irus episode  ~  § 7 Types of verbal abuse in Homer (III): intracommunal, non-disruptive, verbal abuse  ~  § 8 Types of verbal abuse in Homer (IV): the dialogue between Eurymachus and Odysseus  ~  § 9 The metalanguage of verbal abuse (I): νεικέω, εὔχομαι, ἀπειλέω  ~  § 10 The metalanguage of verbal abuse (II): κερτομέω  ~  § 11 Types of verbal abuse in Homer (V): intracommunal, (potentially) disruptive, verbal abuse.

Pan and Kadar's exciting research compares historical and contemporary Chinese (im)polite communication norms and maps the similarities and differences between them. Considering the importance of China on the world stage, understanding Chinese politeness norms is pivotal, to both experts of communication studies and those who have interactions with the Chinese community.

This article describes Anglo-Latin and Old English as two codes correlated in Anglo-Saxon England with the same community of practice. Examining the relationship between Anglo-Latin vocabulary connected with the notions of ‘Latin−Latinity’ and ‘Roman−Romanity’ and the way this vocabulary was infiltrated into the evolving written Old English, it claims that the developments in this domain of Anglo-Latin and Old English lexis can be seen as a continuum of practice. Thus the study aims to contribute methodologically in the specific context of Old English lexicon and theoretically to the understanding of bilingual modes in communities of practice.

Timofeeva, Olga (2013) “Of ledenum bocum to engliscum gereorde: Bilingual Communities of Practice in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Communities of Practice in the History of English, ed. by Joanna Kopaczyk and Andreas H. Jucker, 201–224. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 235. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

This article examines an interesting case study of the cultural, social, and ideological functions of translation. My discussion focuses on the most successful editorial initiative in early modern England: the metrical translation of the Book of Psalms by Thomas Sternhold and his followers. Printed in 1,000 editions from its first publication in 1562 to its last in 1828, the "Sternhold and Hopkins" metrical psalter was immensely popular; a million copies were sold by 1640. At the centre of public, personal and family devotion , often appended to the Geneva Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, this translation had a remarkable impact not just on theology, but on literacy and on language, as well as, more broadly, on mentalities and social interactions.

This edited collection investigates historical linguistic politeness and impoliteness. Although some research has been undertaken uniting politeness and historical pragmatics, it has been sporadic at best, and often limited to traditional theoretical approaches. This is a strange state of affairs, because politeness plays a central role in the social dynamics of language. This collection, containing contributions from renowned experts, aims to fill this hiatus, bringing together cutting-edge research. Not only does it illuminate the language usage of earlier periods, but by examining the past it places politeness today in context. Such a diachronic perspective also affords a further test-bed for current models of politeness. This volume provides insights into historical aspects of language, particularly items regularly deployed for politeness functions, and the social, particularly interpersonal, contexts with which it interacts. It also sheds light on how (social) meanings are dynamically constructed in situ, and probes various theoretical aspects of politeness. Its papers deploy a range of multilingual (e.g. English, Spanish, Italian and Chinese) diachronic data drawn from different genres such as letters, dramas, witch trials and manners books.

The appearance of sports reporting was among the major developments of nineteenth-century journalism. While sports were only very exceptionally covered in the newspapers during the first half of the century, by the end of the Victorian era a diverse array of sports stories provided staple content for the pages of both broadsheet and popular papers. Dealing with the phenomenon of football match reports in The Times, this article documents the early specimens of the novel genre from the 1860s and the 1870s, tracing some of the linguistic forms and structural features that characterise the early search for the discursive conventions of the new genre. By focusing on a popular topic in a serious newspaper, the analysis illustrates that the emergence of the popular topic of football in a serious daily newspaper was not only very gradual and tentative, but was also marked with substantial uncertainty about the macrostructural and microstructural composition of the reports.

A comparison of 18th and 19th century business correspondence from Britain, Australia and Canada in a historical pragmatics approach: opening formulae, closing formulae, among other politeness variables, are considered from the social positions of the letter writers and addressees. Some parallels with the literature on contemporaneous writing guides in included.