Cover not available
Part of
English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact
Edited by Bettelou Los, Chris Cummins, Lisa Gotthard, Alpo Honkapohja and Benjamin Molineaux
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 359] 2022
► pp. 165–180

Chapter 9
Speech acts in the history of English

Gaps and paths of evolution

 | University of Cologne
Throughout the history of the English language we find different sets of speech-act verbs which seem to reflect the most prominent speech acts. These inventories change across the periods of the English language, revealing remarkable lexical gaps. This chapter investigates some of these gaps and how they were filled in the course of history. The basic result of this chapter is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand it suggests that the study of speech-act gaps and paths of evolution of speech acts, together with a systematic study of speech-act loanwords is a highly promising but completely unexplored area in historical pragmatics. On the other hand, not all donor languages may have exerted a significant influence in the long run.
Keywords: speech acts, Old English, Middle English, Scandinavian influence, loanwords
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Expressive speech acts in Old English: The case of apologising
  • 3.The evolution of the speech act of apologising: Speech act first
  • 4.The evolution of the speech act of congratulating: Loanword first
  • 5.The evidence of speech-act loanwords: A pilot study on Scandinavian loans in Middle English
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.359.09koh
References (22)
Sources
Bosworth, Joseph & Thomas N. Toller. 1898, 1921. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [URL]. (22 January, 2021)
Dictionary of Old English A-G on CD-ROM. 2008. Dictionary of Old English Project, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Dictionary of Old English Corpus: [URL]. (22 January, 2021)
Middle English Dictionary online. [URL]. (22 January, 2021)
Oxford English Dictionary online. [URL]. (22 January, 2021)
Thesaurus of Old English: [URL]. (22 January, 2021)
References
Bax, Marcel (ed.) 2003. Ritual language behaviour. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4(2) (Special Issue).Google Scholar
Bertuccelli Papi, Marcella. 2000. Is a diachronic speech act theory possible? Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1. 56–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durkin, Philip. 2014. Borrowed words: A history of loanwords in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frantzen, Allan J. 2012. Anglo-Saxon keywords. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glare, P. G. W. (ed.). 1968. Oxford Latin dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Herrtage, Sidney J. H. (ed.). 1881. Catholicon Anglicum, an English-Latin wordbook. London: Trübner. Early English Text Society.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. & Irma Taavitsainen. 2000. Diachronic speech act analysis: Insults from flyting to flaming. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1(1). 67–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Apologies in the history of English: Routinized and lexicalized expressions of responsibility and regret. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Speech acts in the history of English, 229–244. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas. 2004. Methodological problems in corpus-based historical pragmatics: The case of English directives. In Karin Aijmer & Bengt Altenberg (eds.), Advances in corpus linguistics, 237–247. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
. 2017. Anglo-Saxon expressives: Automatic historical speech-act analysis and philological intervention. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 28(1). 43–56.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1995. Linguistic semantics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1995. An invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1982. The things we do with words: Ilongot speech acts and speech act theory in philosophy. Language in Society 11. 203–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. 1976. A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society 5. 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stetter, Christian. 1991. Text und Textur. Hat die Sprechakttheorie eine historische Dimension? In Dietrich Busse (ed.), Diachrone Semantik und Pragmatik: Untersuchungen zur Erklärung und Beschreibung des Sprachwandels, 68–81. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Graham. 2018. Sincerity in Medieval English language and literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Marlina, Marlina, Dina Wulansari, Ine Santia & Yunie Amalia Rakhmyta
2023. An Analysis of Speech Act in the Animation Movie: Coco. Pubmedia Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris 1:2 ► pp. 14 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.