Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2002

In this paper, I present a sociopragmatic method of analysing historical courtroom interaction, drawing data from Boyer and Nissenbaum’s (1977) Salem Witchcraft Papers. Concentrating as much upon the answers that the magistrates’ questions received as the questions themselves, I complement a grammatical analysis of question-types and their conducivity, with an analysis of responses in terms of Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle. I argue that (1) the magistrates’ questions appear to take on additional “controlling” and “accusing” functions, and (2) questions that functioned as accusations were particularly difficult to disprove, in part because the magistrates were responsible for “judging” the “legitimacy” of a “reality” their questioning strategy helped to construct. I demonstrate that the Salem magistrates adopted a “guilty but unwilling to confess” paradigm that led them to assume that defendants who maintained their innocence were lying, and then discuss the implications of reality paradigms for Grice’s (1975) theory.

This paper draws upon Horn’s reworking of Grice’s conversational maxims as Q- and R-principles in order to provide a rich pragmatic reading of British comic drama, from the London comedies of Ben Jonson, to the restoration comedy of William Wycherley to the late twentieth-century London comedy of Steven Berkoff. I demonstrate that short-circuited implicatures (SCIs) as well as conventional and conversational implicatures operate to illuminate comic meaning for readers, both knowledgeable and unfamiliar with the historical code and the cultural milieu in which these plays may be set. I conclude that two kinds of pragmatic work are involved in reading comic drama: conversational implicature is situation- rather than code-based, and depends upon our ability to construe pragmatic acts in the dramatic text. The other kind of pragmatic work involves the inference that the meanings intended are conventional and cannot be reconstructed or calculated from what is being said.

The indirect conveyance of functional meaning is a conspicuous and thoroughly studied characteristic of contemporary linguistic practice. Even so, in addition to seeming “something natural” indirect language use appears to be a universally spread phenomenon, and both factors may have caused students in the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis to generally overlook the significant issue of whether or not indirectness was a characteristic feature of earlier forms of linguistic communication as well and, if such is the case, how in bygone eras non-literal meanings were imparted. The overall lack of historical and diachronic perspectives on indirect language use implies that there are to date no theories explaining its origin and development over time. In this article, I shall argue that currently prevailing modes such as conventional and inferential indirectness are historically speaking rather recent innovations, and that in pre-modern times indirect pragmatic meaning was established in a markedly different fashion. Taking the mediaeval pre-combat dialogue and some of its earlier manifestations as my focal material, I will try to establish that ritual interaction, more particularly the time-honoured altercation rite, marks a primary stage in the development of indirect communication. Considering the conceptual links between ritual behaviour and indirect language use, I will contend that oral ritual is a precursor of the now prevailing linguistic strategies for being indirect.

The Tempest is a “mankind” type of play, and Shakespeare’s strategy is to present fallen man in terms of language. Various aspects of “fallen language” are encoded in the characterisation and verbal exchanges. The unifying feature is a notable lack of “caritas”, due to an extreme self-centredness in the speakers, which Shakespeare displays in scenes of all-round incomprehension between many of the persons of the play. Such closed states of mind I have labelled “subjective”, giving this word a negative connotation. A regenerative process is marked by a hard-won return to communication worthy of being called “human” according to Renaissance ideals. I have labelled such negotiations between characters “intersubjective”. In the play, the channels of communication are restored by means of various insights, among them Prospero’s better self-knowledge and Ferdinand’s experiential discovery of truth. The “language of the soul” flows when such processes are set in motion; this special language is written into the play and is experienced in many guises within the play and, according to Renaissance rhetorical theory, by the audience as well.

This paper focuses on the interaction between the characters in three of Chaucer’s fabliaux — the Miller’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale and the Shipman’s Tale — from the perspective of historical dialogue analysis. All tales tell a different version of seduction, intrigue and adultery. The plot development is studied through the characters’ speeches, with particular attention to the use of politeness strategies and emotional language. These features are related to character description and genre expectations. The analysis shows that the wives in the Canterbury Tales fabliaux intentionally mislead and divert their husbands by changing into a polite and endearing mode of conversation, while the husbands tend to be consistent in their way of speaking to their wives throughout the story.