Historical Pragmatics

Abstract

In a broad, sociologically based view of pragmatics, historical pragmatics is a field of study that wants to understand the patterns of intentional human interaction (as determined by the conditions of society) of earlier periods, the historical developments of these patterns, and the general principles underlying such developments. It is based on an empirical study of historical data in all the diversity in which it has survived. Written texts are seen as communicative acts in their own right and they are taken to comprise a broad range of varieties of language that can be located on several different variability scales, such as the scale from the language of immediacy to the language of distance. The field of historical pragmatics can be split into subfields on the basis of the linguistic unit under investigation; from expressions to utterances, discourses, and discourse domains. Future work in historical pragmatics is expected to rely even more heavily on corpus-linguistic methodologies and to increase the sophistication of such analyses, particularly in terms of pattern searches for functional elements and the inclusion of contextual features.

Book Review: English Historical Linguistics: Approaches and Perspectives

“…However, one could argue that the interest of the volume is not equally distributed over the different approaches, despite the fact that each chapter covers roughly the same number of pages. For instance, following Jucker's (2008) characterization of historical pragmatics (represented in Table 10.1 [247]), chapters 7 and 10 could be considered two subcomponents of the same discipline (i.e., Historical Pragmatics). While Inference-based approaches and Historical pragmatic approaches are each awarded their own chapter, Cynthia Allen (chapter 3) is tasked with capturing the essence of the Generative Approach in a single chapter (while such an endeavor would ideally require its own 433-page textbook).…”

“…This is because explicit comparison or juxtaposition between theoretical frameworks remains fairly sparse in the volume; such comparison is perhaps most prominently featured in chapter 2, which provides a historical overview of the field more generally, but it is indeed less visible in other chapters. Still, this does not mean that there are no (explicit or more subtle) links and connections drawn between the approaches and perspectives described in this volume: chapter 4, for instance, includes a section on how Psycholinguistic concepts are treated in linguistic theories (91-93), chapter 10 ("Historical Pragmatic Approaches") includes a table adapted from Jucker (2008) that essentially compares and connects the approaches of chapters 6, 7, 8, and 10, and chapter 6 also briefly engages in a framework comparison when it states that the "functional-cognitive approach is in stark contrast to theories of language that consider incomplete transmission of grammatical structure to be the main impetus for language change" (137). Moreover, the added value of the introductory chapter, where the approaches addressed in the individual chapters are placed in their historical context, should not be overlooked.…”

Historical Pragmatics: Evidence From The Old Bailey

“…Another pragmatic ‘approach to language use, the perspective view’ adopts a ‘wider conception of pragmatics’ than the component view (Taavitsainen & Jucker : 5): simply put, adherents explore both language‐internal and language‐external factors. They are motivated by a desire ‘to understand the patterns of intentional human interaction … of earlier periods’, ‘as determined by the condition of society’, ‘the historical developments of these patterns, and the general principles underlying such developments’ (Jucker : 895). And this leads them to explore the interactional effect(s) of an array of contexts, linguistic, cognitive, social, historical, political, cultural, etc.…”

Overcoming the “Bad Data” Problem: Examples of Spoken Language in Italian Epistolary Discourse

“…Recent research in the field of historical pragmatics, as shown in The Historical Perspective in Pragmatics by Jacobs and Jucker (1995), addresses the problem of corpus selection. Other research on the topic has been done by Culpeper and Kytö (2000), Jucker (1994Jucker ( , 2000Jucker ( , 2008, and Taavitsainen and Fitzmaurice (2007), all of whom echo the same sentiment: corpora in historical pragmatics are flawed, but there are ways in which they may be used when doing research. The following chapter outlines some of the ways in which the "bad data" problem might be overcome.…”

“…In this research, we focus on one letter dated July 14, 1428. In order to determine the aspects of spoken language found in the letter, the frameworks devised by Jucker (2008), Koch and Oesterreicher (1985), and Culpeper and Kytö (2010) were applied. The results seem to suggest that this particular corpus contains examples of spoken language, albeit a particular subtype -diplomatic discourse.…”