{"title":"“Ih gebiude dir, wurm!”","authors":"Valentina Concu","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20012.con","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20012.con","url":null,"abstract":"The number of diachronic studies on English speech acts has recently increased remarkably, highlighting the importance of these phenomena for the understanding of the contextualised dimension of linguistic interactions. Recent studies on the realisation of directives in Old English have shown how, in the Anglo-Saxon world, negative politeness did not play a significant role. This study also focusses on the realisation of directives from a diachronic perspective but concentrating on Old Saxon and Old High German, filling an empirical gap in the literature. Focussing on four manifestations, the preliminary data shows the Old Saxon and Old High German may have also been worlds “beyond politeness”.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":"237 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139242905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The pragmatics of royal discourse in William Shakespeare’s <i>Henry vi</i>","authors":"Urszula Kizelbach","doi":"10.1075/jhp.19012.kiz","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.19012.kiz","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Politeness ( Brown and Gilman 1989 ; Rudanko 1993 ; Kopytko 1995 ) and impoliteness ( Culpeper 1996 , 2001 ; Bousfield 2007 ) have a prominent place in the reading of Shakespearean drama and serve as a means of characterisation. In this study, I utilise (im)politeness and face theory to characterise the royal discourse in 1, 2, 3 Henry vi . The study aims to analyse the linguistic behaviour of King Henry vi to see how well his royal discourse reflects his kingship and how his linguistic inadequacy contributes to his political failures. I investigate Henry’s use of (im)politeness and facework to handle political negotiations and I evaluate his level of awareness of the “political face”, which is the king’s desire to preserve a positive public image and to save face in social interactions. I look at the examples of Henry’s inadequate linguistic behaviour and try to establish why this behaviour was inefficient in a given scene and context.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135616453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The pragmatic and rhetorical function of perfect doubling in the work of D.V. Coornhert","authors":"Cora van de Poppe, Joanna Wall","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20007.van","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20007.van","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Early Modern Dutch writer D. V. Coornhert (1522–1590) was an influential figure in the key religious and linguistic developments of his times. Bringing together these two facets and combining both a linguistic (pragmatics/discourse studies and semantics) and a literary studies (rhetoric) approach, this intra-author variation study examines Coornhert’s use of have -doubling constructions (e.g., have had written ) alongside simple perfects (e.g., have written ). At the macro-level, we show that have -doubling was restricted to Coornhert’s argumentative and predominantly moral – theological prose. At the micro-level, we then firstly link Coornhert’s have -doubling to the well-studied double perfect of modern German which has been proposed to signal the absence of current relevance and have emphasis functions. Secondly, connecting these observations with the pragmatics of verb – tense variation, this article proposes that have -doubling parallels the historical present in functioning as a stance marker/evaluative device in Coornhert’s moral – theological prose.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Repeated, imagined, hearsay","authors":"Jenelle Thomas","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20005.tho","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20005.tho","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I analyse the representation of reported discourse in testimony from a 1795 conspiracy trial. I present a framework for analysing scribal intervention in discourse reporting and show that, although the transcription conventions of historical criminal proceedings offer the appearance of being objective representations, recorded testimony privileges idealised representations of speech events. In fact, a special status is given to those speech events to which those in the courtroom were not privy, that is, hearsay. When scribes use Direct Discourse to report this type of speech, they are simultaneously marking it as evidence available for judicial decision-making and distancing themselves from the judgment and interpretation process. I show that this is particularly problematic for interpreted testimony. This has implications for both our understanding of historical courtroom processes and the use of trial transcripts for historical sociolinguistic and pragmatic analysis.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135980738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modal may in requests","authors":"Christine Elsweiler","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20013.els","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20013.els","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study applies House’s (1996, 2005) dimensions of cross-cultural differences as a diagnostic tool to investigate regional variation regarding two\u0000 pragmalinguistic requestive patterns with may in Scottish and English non-private letters (1500 to 1700). The\u0000 dimensional scheme proves a useful tool for explaining similarities and differences in the requestive behaviour in the two\u0000 varieties. It is shown that, in the sixteenth century, grounders with may are part of a set of downgrading\u0000 devices employed by letter-writers to counteract the directness and self-orientation particularly of performative requests in both\u0000 the Scottish and the English correspondence. Moreover, the dimensional analysis explicates the cross-varietal differences\u0000 regarding may in the seventeenth century correspondence by linking the rise of mitigating may in\u0000 performative requests in the Scottish letters to the increased self-orientation towards the letter-writer, which is not\u0000 counter-balanced by other downgraders.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49179762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The history of second-person pronouns in European Portuguese","authors":"Víctor Lara Bermejo","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20002.lar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20002.lar","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 European Portuguese is known for the complexity of its second-person pronouns system. Despite this fact, there are\u0000 not many works that deal with its evolution, since most analyses focus on case studies. In this article, I aim to pinpoint the\u0000 diachrony of the second-person pronominal system of European Portuguese through the analysis of a corpus consisting of letters\u0000 that cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The data will be compared to the available information regarding the previous\u0000 centuries as well as the present. The results show that the European variety has journeyed through three very specific periods in\u0000 its history, triggering both loss of inflection and person disagreements. Moreover, it has always maintained the spectrum of\u0000 distance or power as the unmarked form of politeness – in contrast to the fashions attested in other languages and elsewhere in\u0000 Europe.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45734870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The rise of what-general extenders in English","authors":"L. Brinton","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20009.bri","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20009.bri","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000General extenders (ges) are elements such as and so forth occurring at the right periphery. On the referential level, they implicate a set, but they also serve a range of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as hedging and interpersonal relations. Some sociolinguistic studies have seen the development of ges as synchronic grammaticalization involving phonetic reduction, decategorialization, semantic bleaching and pragmatic enrichment, but other studies have found no evidence of ongoing grammaticalization. Historical studies of ges are few. This paper sets out to fill this gap by studying the rise of disjunctive, adjunctive and bare ges formed with what – (or/and) what you will, or what, or/and what else, (or) whatever, (or/and) what not and (or/and) what have you. Despite their apparent similarity, these are shown to have quite different sources and histories. Their development conforms to some of the recognized parameters of grammaticalization but is more fruitfully understood from a constructionist approach.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42338986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disenchantment of the word in sixteenth-century Dutch farce","authors":"Femke Kramer","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20010.kra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20010.kra","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Representations of exorcism in farces written and performed in the sixteenth-century Low Countries at first sight merely testify to their authors’ propensity for the grotesque and critical stance towards Roman Catholic rituals. This paper argues that these farcical exorcism episodes, besides ridiculing exorcism and expressing scepticism in matters of demonology, also undermined beliefs concerning the potency of language. Analysis of the ritual as represented in farce and the metadiscursive comments surrounding it points to a conception of the ceremony as “administering” inherently powerful words to an object. This conception is also reflected in a contemporaneous “speech act theory” avant la lettre which attributes autonomous powers to words. Viewed against a backdrop of historical and ethnographic documentation on this type of discourse, this notion is likely to be an outgrowth of perceptions underlying ritual discourse activities cross-culturally. Discrediting the belief that words are capable of affecting reality autonomously, the playwrights may have advocated an understanding of language as a fully man-made instrument, the use and efficacy of which are entirely human-controlled processes.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48162979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Story, style, and structure","authors":"M. I. Moyna, Teresa Blumenthal","doi":"10.1075/jhp.20001.moy","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20001.moy","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study analyses variation and change in Uruguayan Spanish address between formal (usted) and\u0000 informal variants (tú, vos). It focusses on address representations in children’s literature written between 1918\u0000 and 1973 – foundational texts that helped consolidate national identity. Our study answers the following questions: (a) What were\u0000 the most frequent pronominal and verbal address forms employed in early Uruguayan children’s literature? (b) What were their pragmatic\u0000 and stylistic contexts of use? And (c) To what extent did those forms and uses differ from their contemporary counterparts? The\u0000 second-person pronouns and verbs from eleven children’s books were analysed quantitatively to establish frequencies. We found that\u0000 early children’s literature presented usted and tú as the urban norm. Vernacular\u0000 vos was practically absent until the 1940s, and afterwards it was found only in specific constrained\u0000 contexts. This differs markedly from contemporary literature for children, which favours voseo and reflects\u0000 orality quite accurately.","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45836542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Chor (2018): Directional Particles in Cantonese: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization","authors":"D. Kádár","doi":"10.1075/jhp.00071.kad","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00071.kad","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54081,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Pragmatics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42541372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}