Abstract This paper1 addresses the visual-pragmatic functions of the so-called common mark of abbreviation, or macron, in a section of BL Royal MS 18 D II (ff. 147v–162r) – one of the best known “deluxe” manuscripts containing Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes. Contextualised within the framework of visual pragmatics, or Pragmatics on the Page (Carroll et al. 2013), the manuscript in question is considered here as a visual text (Kendall et al. 2013) – one for which the readers construe the meaning through internalising the physical organisation of discourse. The paper attempts to unpack the ways in which the common mark of abbreviation, employed by the scribes as a visual-pragmatic marker, organises the discourse of the manuscript page on three levels of meaning: textual, interactional and metalinguistic (following Erman 2001). The pragmatic roles of the macron are then confronted with the visual forms and possible functions of its notorious graphic doppelganger (i.e., the otiose stroke).

中文翻译：

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约翰·利德盖特 (John Lydgate) 的《底比斯之围》中缩写和省略笔画的视觉语用学

摘要 本文 1 在 BL Royal MS 18 D II (ff. 147v–162r) 的一部分中讨论了所谓的通用缩写标记或长音符号的视觉语用功能 - 最著名的“豪华”手稿之一，其中包含利德盖特围攻底比斯。在视觉语用学或页面上的语用学（Carroll et al. 2013）的框架内进行语境化，有问题的手稿在此处被视为视觉文本（Kendall et al. 2013）——读者通过内化来解释其含义话语的物理组织。本文试图解开被抄写员用作视觉语用标记的常见缩写标记的方式，在三个意义层面上组织手稿页面的话语：文本、交互和元语言（遵循 Erman 2001）。