Historical pragmatics is the study of language use (especially in spoken language) in its historical dimension.

State of the Art

Since the late 1970's, historical linguists have discovered their growing interest in pragmatic questions—first in German, then in Romance linguistics. Especially thanks to Andreas Jucker this field has also been attracting more and more colleagues from English linguistics over the past ten years^[1]. Meanwhile there is also a Journal of Historical Pragmatics, which is edited by Andreas Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen.

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 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 text prior to the 17th century^[2].

See also

• historical linguistics
• pragmatics
• speech act
• text linguistics

Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. ... The notion speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. ... Text lingustics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems. ...

External Links

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

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.

Notes

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.