Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Volume 24, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract

This study analyses variation and change in Uruguayan Spanish address between formal (usted) and informal variants (tú, vos). It focusses on address representations in children’s literature written between 1918 and 1973 – foundational texts that helped consolidate national identity. Our study answers the following questions: (a) What were the most frequent pronominal and verbal address forms employed in early Uruguayan children’s literature? (b) What were their pragmatic and stylistic contexts of use? And (c) To what extent did those forms and uses differ from their contemporary counterparts? The second-person pronouns and verbs from eleven children’s books were analysed quantitatively to establish frequencies. We found that early children’s literature presented usted and tú as the urban norm. Vernacular vos was practically absent until the 1940s, and afterwards it was found only in specific constrained contexts. This differs markedly from contemporary literature for children, which favours voseo and reflects orality quite accurately.

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.

Abstract

Representations 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.

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.

This article reviews Code-Switching: Unifying Contemporary and Historical Perspectives

This article reviews Directional Particles in Cantonese: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization