Cover not available
Introduction published In:
Historical (socio)pragmatics at present
Edited by Matylda Włodarczyk and Irma Taavitsainen
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18:2] 2017
► pp. 159–174

Introduction

Historical (socio)pragmatics at present

| Adam Mickiewicz University
| University of Helsinki

This introductory paper defines the present state of the art of historical (socio)pragmatics. We single out interactional and social foci as the most important, and we briefly characterise some more narrowly defined perspectives. These involve a politeness-related view that relies on relational practice with dynamic negotiations and the context-based approach to language use in time and space with its situational and cultural constraints. Next, the paper discusses the research questions addressed in this Special Issue. The papers cover diachronic changes in rhetorical and sociocultural modes of communication, whether and how irony and sarcasm can be detected in different historical periods, how metadiscourse reveals politeness strategies and intercultural transfer, what disruptive institutional activity types occur and what their cognitive underpinnings are, how ephemeral texts have been used in social and political conflict, how meaning-making practices work on the macro level of genres, and how literacy skills are reflected in correspondence with a connection to genre models. Overall, this introduction aims to set the scene for current historical (socio)pragmatics. We show its interdisciplinarity and methodologically eclectic research ground, and how it may develop in relation to, and feed into, the neighbouring fields of linguistics and the humanities in general.

Keywords: context, corpus-based methodologies, historical pragmatics, historical sociopragmatics, language in time and space, qualitative methodologies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language use in time and space: Situational and cultural contexts
  • 3.Methods of (socio)pragmatics
    • 3.1Historical corpus pragmatics
    • 3.2Pragmatics of manuscripts and early printed books
    • 3.3Multilayered methodologies and triangulation: From micro to macro levels
  • 4.Emerging foci and current trends
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00010.int
References (54)
Aijmer, Karin and Christoph Rühlemann
(eds) 2015 Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Verbal Aggression and Impoliteness: Related or Synonymous?” In Derek Bousfield and Miriam A. Locher (eds), Impoliteness in Language: Studies on Its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, 181–207. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2017 “Context and Historical (Socio-)Pragmatics Twenty Years On”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18 (2): 315–336. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archer, Dawn and Jonathan Culpeper
2009 “Identifying Key Sociophilological Usage in Plays and Trial Proceedings (1640–1760): An Empirical Approach via Corpus Annotation”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10 (2): 260–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnovick, Leslie K.
1995 “Sounding and Flyting in English Agonistic Insult: Writing Pragmatic History in a Cross-cultural Context”. In Mava Jo Powell (ed.), The Twenty-first LACUS Forum 1994, 600–19. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.Google Scholar
Auer, Anita, Daniel Schreier and Richard Watts
(eds) 2015 Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bax, Marcel and Dániel Z. Kádár
(eds) 2011 Understanding Historical (Im)politeness. Special Issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12 (1–2).Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas
2004 “Historical Patterns for the Grammatical Marking of Stance: A Cross-register Comparison”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5 (1): 107–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas and Bethany Gray
2013 “Being Specific about Historical Change: The Influence of Sub-register”. Journal of English Linguistics 41 (2): 104–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2005 Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burckhardt, Jacob
1990 [1878] The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter
2004 Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Ruth, Matti Peikola, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Liisa Varila, Janne Skaffari and Risto Hiltunen
2013 “Pragmatics on the Page: Visual Text in Late Medieval English Books”. European Journal of English Studies 17 (1): 54–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clover, Carol J.
1980 “The Germanic Context of the Unferð Episode”. Speculum 55 (3): 444–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760
2006 Compiled under the Supervision of Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) and Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University).Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2009 “Historical Sociopragmatics: An Introduction”. In Jonathan Culpeper (ed.), Historical Sociopragmatics. Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10 (2): 179–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Historical Sociopragmatics”. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Historical Pragmatics, 69–94. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan and Jane Demmen
2011 “Nineteenth-century English Politeness: Negative Politeness, Conventional Indirect Requests and the Rise of the Individual Self”. In Dániel Z. Kádár and Marcel Bax (eds), Understanding Historical (Im)politeness. Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12 (1–2), 49–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kytö
2010 Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Melanie
2016 “ ‘By the Queen’: Collaborative Authorship in Scribal Correspondence of Queen Elizabeth I”. In James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (eds), Women, Letters and the Rhetorics of Gender and Agency in Early Modern Britain, 1540–1690, 36–54 London: Taylor and Francis Group.Google Scholar
Gotti Maurizio and Stefania Maci
2011 “Communicating Attitudes and Values through Language Choices: Diatopic and Diastratic Variation in Mary Magdalene in MS Digby 133”. In Päivi Pahta and Andreas Jucker (eds), Communicating Early English Manuscripts, 55–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grund, Peter J.
2007 “The Anatomy of Correction: Additions, Cancellations and Changes in the Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Trials”. Studia Neophilologica 79 (1): 3–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Textual History as Language History? Text Categories, Corpora, Editions and the Witness Depositions from the Salem Witch Trials”. Studia Neophilologica 84 (1): 40–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
2009 Edited by Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels and Irené Wotherspoon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hübler, Axel and Ulrich Busse
2012 “Introduction”. In Axel Hübler and Ulrich Busse (eds), Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English: A Contribution to Historical Pragmatics, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Bemjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H.
(ed.) 1995 Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas. H.
2012 “Changes in Politeness Cultures”. In Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, 422–33. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Päivi Pahta
2011 “Communicating Manuscripts: Authors, Scribes, Readers, Listeners and Communicating Characters”. In Päivi Pahta and Andreas H. Jucker (eds), Communicating Early English Manuscripts, 3–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen
2000 “Diachronic Speech Act Analysis: Insults from Flyting to Flaming”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (1): 67–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(eds) 2008 Speech Acts in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics: Intersections and Interactions”. In Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker and Jukka Tuominen (eds), Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics, 3–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z. and Jonathan Culpeper
2010 “Historical (Im)politeness: An Introduction”. In Jonathan Culpeper and Dániel Z. Kádár (eds), Historical (Im)politeness Research, 9–36. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas
2008 “Linguistic Politeness in Anglo-Saxon England? A Study of Old English Address Terms”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 91: 140–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kytö, Merja and Matti Peikola
2014 “Philology on the Move: Manuscript Studies at the Dawn of the 21st Century”. Studia Neophilologica 86 (1): 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kytö, Merja, Peter J. Grund and Terry Walker
(eds) 2011 Testifying to Language and Life in Early Modern England (Including CD-ROM An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED)). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Laitinen, Mikko
2015 “Early Nineteenth-Century Pauper Letters”. In Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard Watts (eds), Letter Writing and Language Change, 185–201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N.
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lutzky, Ursula
2012 Discourse Markers in Early Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marttila, Ville
2014 Creating Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics: The Case of Potage Dyvers, A Family of Six Middle English Recipe Collections. PhD thesis. University of Helsinki. Available online at: [URL].
Moore, Colette
2011 Quoting Speech in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pahta, Päivi and Andreas H. Jucker
(eds) 2011 Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paternoster, Annick and Marcel Bax
2015 “Towards a Diachrony of Relational Work: Factors behind Sociopragmatic Change in 18th and 19th Century Europe”. Discussion panel at IPrA conference. Conveners: Annick Paternoster and Marcel Bax.Google Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
2008 Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Klaus. P. and Ann Barron
(eds) 2008 Variational Pragmatics. A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Jeremy and Christian Kay
2011 “The Pragmatics of Punctuation in Older Scots”. In Päivi Pahta and Andreas Jucker (eds), Communicating Early English Manuscripts, 212–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Suhr, Carla
2011 Publishing for the Masses: Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jenny
1981 Pragmatic Failure. Unpublished MA dissertation. University of Lancaster.Google Scholar
1983 “Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure”. Applied Linguistics 4 (2): 91–112. (Based on MA dissertation 1981 University of Lancaster).Google Scholar
Włodarczyk, Matylda
2013 “1820 Settler Petitions in the Cape Colony: Genre Dynamics and Materiality”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 14 (1): 45–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, Johanna L.
2009 “Structures and Expectations: A Systematic Analysis of Margaret Paston’s Formulaic and Expressive Language”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10 (2): 187–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by 5 other publications

Leitner, Magdalena & Andreas H. Jucker
2021. Historical Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 687 ff. DOI logo
Taavitsainen, Irma
2020. A medical debate of “heated pamphleteering” in the early eighteenth century. In Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 312], ► pp. 142 ff. DOI logo
Goddu, André
2019. The (likely) Last Edition of Copernicus’s Libri revolutionum. Variants :14 ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo
Włodarczyk, Matylda
2017. Auer, Anita, Daniel Schreier and Richard Watts (eds). 2015.Letter Writing and Language Change. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18:1 ► pp. 142 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 567 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.