Publications

Publication details [#56139]

Hübler, Axel and Ulrich Busse, eds. 2012. Investigations into the Meta-Communicative Lexicon of English. A contribution to historical pragmatics. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 220). John Benjamins. vii+292 pp.
Publication type
Book – edited volume
Publication language
English

Annotation

The volume contributes to historical pragmatics an important chapter on what has so far not been paid adequate attention to, i.e. historical metapragmatics. More particularly, the collected papers apply a meta-communicative approach to historical texts by focusing on lexis that either directly or metaphorically identifies or characterizes entire forms of communication or single acts and act sequences or minor units. Within the context of their use, such lexical expressions, in fact, provide a key for disclosing historical forms of communication; taken out of context, they build the meta-communicative lexicon. The articles follow three principal distinctions in that they investigate the meta-communicative profile of genres, meta-communicative lexical sets and meta-communicative ethics and ideologies. They cover a broad spectrum of text types that span the entire history of the English language from Anglo-Saxon chronicles to computer-mediated communication.