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Journal of Historical Pragmatics - Online First
Online First articles are the published Version of Record, made available as soon as they are finalized and formatted. They are in general accessible to current subscribers, until they have been included in an issue, which is accessible to subscribers to the relevant volume
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Anyway in Irish English : The development of a pragmatic marker
Author(s): Raymond HickeyAvailable online: 20 December 2024More LessAbstractThe development of the pragmatic marker anyway in Irish English is of relatively recent date. From an original adverb of manner there developed a pragmatic meaning when the element shifted to the right periphery (or became exposed there through deletion of an element to the right of it). A transition period occurred during which varying interpretations of anyway were possible, facilitating the rise of anyway as a pragmatic marker. Later it appeared in the prosodically more prominent left periphery where anyway can only have a pragmatic interpretation. The main theoretical insight of this study is that the discourse function arose from the ambiguous interpretation of unqualified anyway. Importantly, a prosodic distinction arose between the two functions of anyway with the discourse use showing considerably less stress on the final syllable [–weɪ] than the syntactic use.
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“Stay safe!” — A wish, advice, or an order? : Pragmatic variability and change in times of a pandemic
Author(s): Eva OgiermannAvailable online: 03 December 2024More LessAbstractThis paper offers a diachronic analysis focussing on the different uses and forms that the expression stay safe acquired throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. It makes an original contribution to the study of historical pragmatics by drawing on data traditionally examined in the field of linguistic landscape studies and produced during a global health crisis, resulting in an innovative, real-time study of pragmatic change in progress.
Drawing on a corpus of 3,032 public signs photographed in London between March 2020 and December 2021, the paper shows how the expression stay safe was used as a wish and a parting formula in the early stages of the pandemic, and then reverted to a directive function on signs implementing containment measures, illustrating a trend opposed to that typically found in historical pragmatics. It also discusses the variability characterising the data, and the ambiguity of the expressions that are analysed, typical of ongoing pragmatic change.
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From affirmation to concession : Diachrony of Modern Chinese concessive connective kě shì (‘but’) and its implications for connective formation
Author(s): Haiping Long and Weihua ZhouAvailable online: 19 November 2024More LessAbstractThe Modern Chinese concessive connective kě shì (e.g., kàn shàngqù bù zěnmeyàng, kě shì chī qǐlái què tǐng bùcuò [‘it looks not so good, but it tastes quite good’]) did not develop from a clause-initial emphatic kě shì structure that has a pragmatic counter expectation meaning (e.g., kě shì tā shuōde [‘it was really she who said it’]), but from an affirmative response marker kě shì in Early Modern Chinese (e.g., kě shì ne, míng’er nǐ sòngwǒ shénme? [‘quite right, what do you send me as gifts tomorrow?’]). Shì in the connective did not develop from a copula shì, but from an adjective shì meaning ‘right, true’ (e.g., rán, shì yě [‘right, it’s true’]). The hypothesised pathway may be explained as the grammaticalisation of an affirmative response marker used in the context of token agreement, and may be adopted to account for the formation of an Old Chinese concessive connective rán (e.g., rán Zhèng wáng, zǐ yì yǒu bùlì yān [‘but if Zheng State perishes, it serves you no good, either’]). It gives support to an extra-clausal source for the formation of a sentence connective.
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“I have come to the conclusion that you must die” : Threats in Late Modern English threatening letters
Author(s): Theresa NeumaierAvailable online: 17 October 2024More LessAbstractThis paper explores the linguistic realisation of threats in a corpus of threatening letters discussed in Late Modern English (lmode) criminal trials at the Old Bailey. After investigating how trial participants ascribe the action of “threatening” to the utterance in question, I examine which aspects are repeatedly addressed in the letters and which linguistic patterns are employed to perform the threat. The results show that speakers routinely address the preparatory and sincerity conditions of commissives to negotiate whether a letter is threatening. Compared to present-day threats, lmode threats are considerably less speaker-focussed, and more threats explicitly specify threatener, target, and type of harm to be carried out. Linguistically, lmode threatening letters contain a greater amount of taboo language and more non-conditional and retaliative threats.
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Review of Jucker (2020): Politeness in the History of English: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day
Author(s): Mel EvansAvailable online: 10 October 2024More Less
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Review of Brinton (2023): Pragmatics in the History of English
Author(s): Yuanyu Yang and Qiao HuangAvailable online: 07 October 2024More Less
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Review of Paternoster (2022): Historical Etiquette: Etiquette Books in Nineteenth-Century Western Cultures
Author(s): Dariusz KrawczykAvailable online: 07 October 2024More Less
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(Im)Politeness in Vedic Sanskrit : Indirectness and terms of address in Vedic recorded direct speech
Author(s): Francisco Javier Rubio OrecillaAvailable online: 13 September 2024More LessAbstractThis paper focusses on verbal politeness in the direct speech found in Vedic. Certain impersonalisation strategies typical of classical Sanskrit are already attested here, as third-person polite directives or as the expression of the speaker’s wishes, rather than as direct commands, and represent the maximum degree of illocutionary opacity. Passive syntax, which is a prominent device of indirectness in classical Sanskrit, is still marginal in Vedic. In the analysis of terms of address, a hierarchical but highly flexible politeness-orientated allomorphy can be observed. Moreover, the speaker can, in the same interaction, shift from one level of politeness to another to convey changes in his or her self-perception regarding the level of wisdom that he or she has with respect to an interlocutor (factor [±knowing]); rules marked by social stratification are not found to be decisive, contrary to what has been shown to be the case in post-Vedic normative texts.
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Presenting manuscript tables and diagrams to the Middle English reader
Author(s): Matti Peikola and Mari-Liisa VarilaAvailable online: 27 August 2024More LessAbstractIn this paper, we examine information-organising graphic devices such as tables and diagrams in Middle English manuscripts. Our focus is on text producers’ metadiscourse describing these devices and instructing the reader in their use. We also pay attention to the visual and spatial relationship between the graphic device and the surrounding text. Our findings indicate that the metadiscourse associated with graphic devices serves similar functions to image captions (verbal cueing) in modern textbooks: identifying and describing the devices and instructing the reader in using them.
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“Yet ar ye not lyche, for thu art a fals strumpet” : Pronominal terms of address in The Book of Margery Kempe
Author(s): Olga Timofeeva and Leena Kahlas-TarkkaAvailable online: 02 July 2024More LessAbstractIn Late Middle English, the system of second-person pronouns with singular referents is characterised by retractable choices based on the interactional status of interlocutors. This system has until recently been documented mostly in studies based on poetic texts, such as the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, and, to a lesser extent, private correspondence and mystery plays. We use the Book of Margery Kempe as a primary source and offer the perspective of a middle-class female author from early-fifteenth-century Norfolk. Conventional politeness of Margery Kempe requires the default use of ye/you/your forms, especially when addressees are unfamiliar, older or socially superior, but also in situations of mutual acceptance and deference. Thou/thee/thine forms, on the other hand, indicate social or intellectual superiority as well as, at the interactional level, condescension, contempt, annoyance, defiance and abuse. Their use, therefore, is typically marked.
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Negotiating converso identities in the inquisition courtroom : Impoliteness and self-politeness in the 1568–1569 trial of Catarina de Orta
Author(s): Javier E. Díaz-VeraAvailable online: 16 April 2024More LessAbstractThis paper explores the processes of identity construction and negotiation through face work in a Portuguese Inquisition record, corresponding to the trial for Judaism of Catarina de Orta. Concentrating as much on the inquisitor’s questions as on the answers offered by the defendant, I show here that impoliteness and self-politeness co-occur in interaction in the Portuguese Inquisition courtroom discourse. On the one hand, the inquisitor makes abundant use of impoliteness strategies with at least three main aims: to exert his power over the defendant, to trigger specific negative emotions, and to attack her face and her credibility. On the other hand, the defendant’s answers display numerous features of self-politeness, aimed at saving her face from the inquisitor’s attacks and accusations. It is precisely through the interplay of impoliteness and self-politeness that the two competing narratives proposed by the accuser and the defendant are constructed and re-elaborated during every interrogation.
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Chinese “face”-related expressions in Peking and Teochew Opera scripts : A historical contrastive pragmatic inquiry
Author(s): Jiejun Chen, Juliane House and Dániel Z. KádárAvailable online: 29 February 2024More LessAbstractThis paper presents a historical contrastive pragmatic study of the use of Chinese “face”-related expressions in Peking and Teochew Opera scripts. The rationale behind this investigation is that contemporary Mandarin and the Minnan Dialect operate with very different inventories of “face”-related expressions, and it is worth considering whether this difference also applies to historical language use, and, if so, how. Studying this matter is particularly relevant for historical pragmatic research because “face”-related expressions have been under-represented in the field. Our study is based on a corpus of nineteen Peking Opera scripts and a comparable corpus of nineteen Teochew Opera scripts, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The results of our analysis show that the historical Mandarin corpus operates with a duality of the “face”-related expressions lian and mian, in a similar way to modern Mandarin, even though we also found differences between the ways in which these expressions were used in former times and at present. Yet such differences are eclipsed if we contrast historical Mandarin with the Teochew scripts where we found a very different “face” duality than in Mandarin, namely a duality of yan and mian. This duality also differs from what one can witness in present-day Minnan.
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