Historical pragmatics

Historical pragmatics is the study of linguistic pragmatics over time. Research in historical pragmatics is mainly carried out on written corpora as recordings of spoken language are a relatively recent phenomenon.

State of the art

Since the late 1970s, historical linguists have shown growing interest in pragmatic questions—first in German, then in Romance linguistics. The field has also been attracting more and more colleagues from English linguistics since the mid-1990s, with Andreas Jucker being one of the first and most influential proponents.^[1] In Romance linguistics, work by Ulrich Detges, Richard Waltereit, Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti has led to a resurgence of historical pragmatic work focusing on the role of the listener in language change. The Journal of Historical Pragmatics is edited by Dawn Archer.

Methodology

Historical pragmatics has to rely exclusively on written corpora. This leads to the question "How can we find out about the ways people talked to each other in medieval and early modern times?" The difficulty of unmasking spoken language in earlier periods has been discussed several times; for medieval times there are practically no reflexes of or on spoken language, and a majority of studies on historical pragmatics do not delve into texts prior to the 17th century.^[2]

Notes

^ Cf. especially Jucker 1995 and Jucker/Fritz/Lebsanft 1999a for an overview on the development of this discipline.
^ Cf., e.g, the overviews in Jucker et al. 1999b and Jucker 2000.

References

Jucker, Andreas H. (1995), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Jucker, Andreas H./Fritz, Gerd/Lebsanft, Franz (eds.) (1999a), Historical Dialogue Analysis, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Jucker, Andreas H./Fritz, Gerd/Lebsanft, Franz (1999b), "Historical Dialogue Analysis: Roots and Traditions in the Study of the Romance Languages, German and English", in: Jucker/Fritz/Lebsanft 1999a (eds.), 1-33.
Jucker, Andreas H. (2000), "English Historical Pragmatics: Problems of Data and Methodology", in: di Martino, Gabriella / Lima, Maria (eds.), English Diachronic Pragmatics, 17-55. Napoli: CUEN.

External links

Bibliography on historical pragmatics, compiled by Andreas Jucker, with over 450 entries
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Onomasiology Online, internet journal, edited by Joachim Grzega, Alfred Bammesberger and Marion Schöner, that also includes works on historical pragmatics

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[1] Cf. especially Jucker 1995 and Jucker/Fritz/Lebsanft 1999a for an overview on the development of this discipline.

[2] Cf., e.g, the overviews in Jucker et al. 1999b and Jucker 2000.

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