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“Ih gebiude dir, wurm!” Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Valentina Concu
The number of diachronic studies on English speech acts has recently increased remarkably, highlighting the importance of these phenomena for the understanding of the contextualised dimension of linguistic interactions. Recent studies on the realisation of directives in Old English have shown how, in the Anglo-Saxon world, negative politeness did not play a significant role. This study also focusses
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The rise of what-general extenders in English Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Laurel J. Brinton
General extenders (ges) are elements such as and so forth occurring at the right periphery. On the referential level, they implicate a set, but they also serve a range of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as hedging and interpersonal relations. Some sociolinguistic studies have seen the development of ges as synchronic grammaticalization involving phonetic reduction, decategorialization, semantic
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The history of second-person pronouns in European Portuguese Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Víctor Lara Bermejo
European Portuguese is known for the complexity of its second-person pronouns system. Despite this fact, there are not many works that deal with its evolution, since most analyses focus on case studies. In this article, I aim to pinpoint the diachrony of the second-person pronominal system of European Portuguese through the analysis of a corpus consisting of letters that cover the eighteenth and nineteenth
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“Don’t go getting into trouble again!” Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Teresa Fanego
Building on Goldberg’s (2006: 52) observation regarding the existence of “a family of related constructions in English” centred around the verb go, this article explores the history of the construction exemplified in the title (“Don’t go getting into trouble again!”) and its relation to other members of the network of go-constructions. The analysis, conducted using three large corpora, shows that the
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The pragmatics of royal discourse in William Shakespeare’s Henry vi Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Urszula Kizelbach
Politeness (Brown and Gilman 1989; Rudanko 1993; Kopytko 1995) and impoliteness (Culpeper 1996, 2001; Bousfield 2007) have a prominent place in the reading of Shakespearean drama and serve as a means of characterisation. In this study, I utilise (im)politeness and face theory to characterise the royal discourse in 1, 2, 3 Henry vi. The study aims to analyse the linguistic behaviour of King Henry vi
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Review of Chor (2018): Directional Particles in Cantonese: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Dániel Z. Kádár
This article reviews Directional Particles in Cantonese: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization
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Review of Keller (2020): Code-Switching: Unifying Contemporary and Historical Perspectives Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Hamzeh Moradi, Ruijuan Ye
This article reviews Code-Switching: Unifying Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
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Repeated, imagined, hearsay Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Jenelle Thomas
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
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Disenchantment of the word in sixteenth-century Dutch farce Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Femke Kramer
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
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The pragmatic and rhetorical function of perfect doubling in the work of D. V. Coornhert Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Cora van de Poppe, Joanna Wall
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
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Story, style, and structure Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 María Irene Moyna, Teresa Blumenthal
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
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Historical changes in politeness norms Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Johanna Isosävi
Although French courtly models spread to Europe, little research has compared the development of politeness in France with more remote European linguacultures. To fill this gap, I examine folk understandings of historical politeness in Finnish and French linguacultures. Concentrating on cultural outsiders’ own understandings – that is, French people living in Finland and Finns who live or have lived
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The informalisation of address practice in Swedish in a historical perspective Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Maria Fremer
In the 1960s, Swedish address practices underwent a change from an intricate system of honorifics to universal use of the informal second-person singular du. This study challenges the common characterisation of this so called “du-reform” as very quick and straightforward. Previous studies, relying on reported usage and written language, suggest that the formal pronoun ni was considered impolite, while
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The codification of nineteenth-century etiquette Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Annick Paternoster
Etiquette has only marginally attracted the attention of politeness scholars. This article aims to fill a knowledge gap as it explores the concept in a more systematic way, using nineteenth-century prescriptive metasources from four countries (Britain, France, Italy and the United States). Etiquette is found to form a complicated, all-encompassing body of tendentially amoral, mandatory norms, adapting
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Historical language use in Europe from a contrastive pragmatic perspective Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Juliane House, Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu, Wenrui Shi
This paper presents a case study which brings together the fields of contrastive pragmatics and historical pragmatics. Specifically, we contrastively investigate the ways in which the speech act set of “farewell” – representing the closing phase of an interaction – was realised in nineteenth-century historical letters in different linguacultures, including the English, German and Chinese ones. We argue
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Ritual and modern “politeness” in the Romanian Principalities during the Phanariot period Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Mihaela-Viorica Constantinescu
The paper focusses on ritual “politeness” in the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia from a historical sociopragmatic perspective. The analysis of ceremonial literature and memoirs aims to highlight the instrumental role that the performance of conventional gestures and the use of conventional formulae have in presenting the self/other image. The
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A European model of polite conversation? Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Giovanna Alfonzetti
This paper reconstructs the model of polite conversation that is outlined in two Italian conduct books, Della Casa’s Galateo (1774 [1558]) and Gioia’s Il Nuovo Galateo (1802–1827), a model which will then be compared with one detailed in the German text Über den Umgang mit Menschen by Adolph Knigge (1788). The main aim of this study is to highlight the similarities and differences in texts from different
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German and Romance civility in contact Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Linda Gennies
In this paper, I argue for a systematic study of the role that language contact has played in the development of German, French, Italian and Spanish address systems. While the current state of research clearly points to contact-induced changes in Early Modern European polite address, some important desiderata concerning the precise direction, nature and scope of contact influences remain. Against this
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Diplomatic letters from the Republic of Ragusa in the fifteenth century Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Ana Lalić
In this paper, I study the ways in which (im)politeness strategies are used in letters sent by the Republic of Ragusa to its ambassadors in the Bosnian Kingdom during the fifteenth century. The corpus for this research comprises the Lettere di Levante collection, today kept in the Dubrovnik State Archives, Croatia. I aim to determine the politeness strategies that were used in the letters based on
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A culture of “pleasing”? Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Gudrun Held
This paper seeks to explain the development of European politeness as a result of courtly behaviour where “complaisance” played an important role. As traces left in the so-called “language of politeness” of numerous European linguacultures show, mutual “pleasing” determined social performance in hierarchically organised societies by merging aesthetic concepts of form and order with ethical values of
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Facetus and the birth of “European” politeness Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Luis Unceta Gómez
This paper aims to contribute to the study of the first stages of the development of European politeness, through the analysis of the metalanguage of politeness used in two Latin poems with the title Facetus (Facetus: cum nihil utilius and Facetus: moribus et vita), both dating from the twelfth century. These two texts established a fertile genre of behaviour manuals, developed during the Middle Ages
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Cicero’s De Officiis, politeness and modern conduct manuals Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Jon Hall
This paper considers the guidelines for polite conversation and appropriate comportment presented in Cicero’s philosophical treatise De Officiis (44 bce), examining them in the light of recent scholarship on modern conduct manuals (e.g., Terkourafi [2011], Alfonzetti [2016], Culpeper [2017] and Paternoster and Saltamacchia [2017]). In particular, it considers: (1) Cicero’s attempt to impose order on
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Introduction Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Dániel Z. Kádár, Gudrun Held, Annick Paternoster
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Review of Napoli & Ravetto (2017): Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, Diachronic and Cross-linguistic Perspectives Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 Zeltia Blanco-Suárez
This article reviews Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, Diachronic and Cross-linguistic Perspectives
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Review of Narrog & Heine (2021): Grammaticalization Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 Ying Dai, Yicheng Wu
This article reviews Grammaticalization
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“Have nou godenai day” Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 Carol Parrish Jamison
“Have a good day” and its variant “have a nice day” are among our most common forms of modern leave-taking. Although these expressions may seem modern, they can be traced back to a twelfth century English romance, entitled King Horn, and can also be found in a number of other mediaeval works. Linguists typically treat the expression as token politeness that does not warrant detailed analysis. However
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From adverb to intensifier Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 Magdalena Pastuch, Barbara Mitrenga, Kinga Wąsińska
This paper aims is to analyse the status of selected Polish words: okrutnie (‘cruelly’), strasznie (‘terribly’) and szalenie (‘madly’). These units are traditionally considered to be adverbs, and their formal structure and original meaning indicate derivation from proper adjectives. We presume that adverbs might develop into intensifiers, which are semantically close to bardzo (‘very’). By analysing
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Coherence in translation Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 José Sanders, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul
When comparing old and new Bible translations, differences are striking at all discourse levels. This paper concentrates on variations in the representation of subjective cognition and reasoning of subjects in the discourse. A corpus-based analysis was conducted that compared the domains of use of causal fragments in Dutch Bible translations that were either old, contemporary and loyal, or “easy”.
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On the use of sì? (‘yes?’) as invariant follow-up in Italian Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-12-31 Lorella Viola
Follow-ups are elliptical interrogative forms typically constituting an utterance in their own right. They are used to signal attention to the interlocutor, to encourage them to continue or as a reply to a call. This paper investigates the invariant follow-up sì? (‘yes?’) in Italian and it argues that it represents a case of pragmatic language change. To this end, it investigates the diachronic distribution
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Review of Winters (2020): Historical Linguistics: A Cognitive Grammar Introduction Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Isabeau De Smet
This article reviews Historical Linguistics: A Cognitive Grammar Introduction
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The combinative use of “imperative + final particle” in Tokyo language in the Meiji period Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Huiling Chen, Jianying Du
Honorifics in Japanese as a rare linguistic system has received consistent attention in social and cultural linguistic studies. A typical linguistic structure of honorifics is “imperative + sentence-final particles (shuu-joshi)” (henceforth, “final particle”), which has been studied mainly as a compound expression in Tokyo language. Different from previous studies with separated attention towards imperative
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Constructionalized rhetorical questions from negatively biased to negation polarity Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Ruti Bardenstein
How does a rhetorical question become an adverbial npi down-toner? This paper focusses on a specific type of grammaticalization process: the grammaticalization of a rhetorical construction à la Goldberg (1995), namely, a “constructionalized rhetorical question” (Bardenstein 2018) which turns into a down-toning adverbial. The particular focus of this paper is on the Hebrew lo mi yodea ma (‘not who knows
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From deontic modality to conditionality Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Yueh Hsin Kuo
While epistemic modality has been suggested to be a modal source of conditionality, deontic modality has been generally overlooked. Using data from Classical Chinese and the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change, this study demonstrates that the deontic modal bi tends to invite inferences of conditionality in contexts where it is used teleologically and performatively as an indirect speech
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(Polite) directives in mediaeval Catalan Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Katalin Nagy C.
This paper addresses an issue of diachronic speech act analysis and diachronic politeness research at the same time. Its primary aim is to examine uses of two grammatical constructions based on subjunctive forms of the verb plaure (‘please’) in medieval Catalan, relying on a corpus of texts from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. It is argued that the construction “plaure (in subjunctive) + indirect
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Who’s speaking for whom? Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Mingjian Xiang, Esther Pascual, Bosen Ma
This paper deals with rhetorically intended questions in the Zhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoism (fourth century bc). Such questions are generally meant to evoke silent answers in the addressee’s mind, thereby involving a fictive type of interaction (Pascual 2006, 2014). We analyse rhetorical questions as constructions of intersubjectivity (see Verhagen 2005, 2008), involving not just a conceptual
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The subjunctive in Renaissance French Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Miriam A. Eisenbruch
The aim of this study was to explore why the subjunctive, despite its lack of modal productivity, might persist in French. I argue that the subjunctive is a modally void fossil, persisting due to repeated usage following highly entrenched constructions. The focus here is on the behaviour of the subjunctive in Renaissance French, specifically in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Content
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Review of Peikola, Mäkilähde, Salmi, Varila & Skaffari (2017): Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2022-04-19 Jeremy Smith
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A Grammar of Authority? Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Annette Gerstenberg, Carine Skupien-Dekens
Directive Speech Acts (dsas) are a major feature of historical pragmatics, specifically in research on historical (im)politeness. However, for Classical French, there is a lack of research on related phenomena. In our contribution, we present two recently constructed corpora covering the period of Classical French, sermo and apwcf. We present these corpora in terms of their genre characteristics on
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Review of Marcus (2018): The Linguistics of Spoken Communication in Early Modern English Writing: Exploring Bess of Hardwick’s Manuscript Letters Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Terttu Nevalainen
This article reviews The Linguistics of Spoken Communication in Early Modern English Writing: Exploring Bess of Hardwick’s Manuscript Letters
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Turbulent periods and the development of the scientific research article, 1735–1835 Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 David Banks
The results of a previous study (Banks 2018) suggest that the development of scientific writing is more conservative in times of great turbulence. In an attempt to verify this, samples were taken from the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences and the Philosophical Transactions for the years 1735, 1785 and 1835. The development over the years 1735 to 1785 was compared to that between 1785 and 1835. Analysis
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Systemic change and interactional motivation Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Jiajun Chen
The paper focusses on the language-internal and -external motivations for the development of Chinese sentence-final particle bucheng. This particle, from an initial state as a negative verb string, developed into a sentence-final particle through intermediate adverbial stages, and was recruited to interpersonal functions in final position by the sixteenth century. Key motivating factors are identified
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Pragmatic uses of ‘I say’ in Latin Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Jana Mikulová
This paper examines the pragmatic uses and functions of the Latin verb inquam (‘I say’) and compares it with three synonyms – dico (‘I say, I speak, I declare’), loquor (‘I speak, I say, I utter’) and aio (‘I say yes, I say, I affirm’). Verbs of speech and thought in the first person are (cross-linguistically) a source of pragmatic markers, because the first person of these verbs is necessarily speaker-orientated
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Impoliteness in women’s specialised writing in seventeenth-century English Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Francisco Alonso-Almeida, Francisco José Álvarez-Gil
The notion of impoliteness may not trigger prompt associations with earlier women writing, especially non-fiction, in the pre-scientific period. Evidence drawn from seventeenth-century scientific and technical writings reveals that women make use of impoliteness strategies in order to claim and delineate their place within their community of practice. In our texts, we have detected that membership
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Functional expansions of temporal adverbs and discursive connectives Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Chiara Fedriani,Piera Molinelli
Abstract This paper examines the synchronic competition and diachronic substitution of three Latin temporal expressions: tum, tunc (‘at that time’, ‘then’), and later dumque (originally, ‘while-and’), and its Old Italian outcome dunque (‘then’). Besides providing a new path of development and a new etymology for Italian dunque, we describe in detail the steps by which these forms gradually replaced
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Parallels between the negative cycle and the rise of interrogative marking in French Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Richard Waltereit
Abstract In this paper, I discuss a type of construction that is rarely if ever mentioned in connection with diachronic cyclicity: wh-interrogative marking. In particular, I shall compare sentential negation with wh-marking in French and point to interesting commonalities between the prototypical diachronic cycle (negation) and interrogative marking. The pragmatic contrast between question types in
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Semasiological cyclicity in the evolution of discourse markers Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Giulio Scivoletto
AbstractThis study addresses the evolution of the Sicilian discourse marker mentri to explore the concept of cyclicity in semantic–pragmatic change. Stemming from Latin dŭm ĭntĕrim (‘while, in the meantime’), the temporal conjunction develops – like its Romance cognates – an adversative function meaning ‘whereas’, which further evolves from an oppositional to a counter-expectational contrast value
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Some reflections on semantic–pragmatic cycles Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Salvador Pons Bordería,Ana Belén Llopis Cardona
Abstract This paper explores novel ways to consider semantic–pragmatic cycles using a dual strategy: an inwards strategy, whereby the distinctive traits of a pragmatic cycle are established, and an outwards strategy, whereby the categories that delimit semantic–pragmatic cycles are described. The result of this exploration is the distinction between “pragmatic cycle”, “replication”, “concomitance”
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Future markers in Western Romance Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Ulrich Detges
AbstractIn this article, which examines the cyclic evolution of future markers in Western Romance (mainly French and Spanish), I make use of the “satellite model” in the version proposed by Koch and Oesterreicher (1996) to capture the complex interplay between functional change, synchronic variation and sociolinguistic evolution. This model conceives of linguistic cycles as push-chains. Thus, I will
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Local grammars and diachronic speech act analysis Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Hang Su
Abstract This paper proposes a method that is designed to facilitate diachronic speech act analysis. The proposed method draws on the corpus linguistic concept of local grammar – an approach which seeks to account for, not the whole of a language, but one meaning or function only. Local grammar descriptions capture both formal and semantic regularities of speech act realisations, and local grammars
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Pseudo-hortative and the development of the discourse marker eti poca (‘well, let’s see’) in Korean Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Seongha Rhee
Abstract Hortative constructions are good sources of discourse markers (dms) because they have an engaging effect on the addressee. Such an engaging illocutionary effect enables hortative-based dms to acquire diverse functions, such as attracting and maintaining the addressee’s attention and foiling the interlocutor’s initiating an utterance. The dm eti poca (‘well, let’s see’; literally ‘where, let’s
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Visual pragmatics of abbreviations and otiose strokes in John Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Justyna Rogos-Hebda
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
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On the diachrony of giusto? (‘right?’) in Italian Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Lorella Viola
Abstract In Italian, the adjective giusto (‘right’) has performed the discourse function of response marker since at least 1613 (DELI 2008: 671). In this paper, I argue that the adjective has recently undertaken a new process of discoursivization, defined as the diachronic process that ends in discourse (Ocampo 2006: 317). In particular, I maintain that giusto may also serve the function of invariant
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Text-organizing metadiscourse Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Ken Hyland, Feng (Kevin) Jiang
Abstract Published academic writing often seems to be an unchanging form of discourse with its frozen informality remaining stable over time. Recent work has shown, however, that these texts are highly interactive and dialogic as writers anticipate and take into account readers’ likely objections, background knowledge, rhetorical expectations and processing needs. In this paper, we explore one aspect
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Old English law-codes Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Lilo Moessner
Abstract Law language is a cover-term for different genres of legal texts. The genre of law is characterized as being written, legislative and formal. Quantitative studies on the textual and linguistic structure of Old English (oe) law-codes are lacking so far, but both aspects are analysed in this paper on the basis of a corpus of about 20,000 words. The results of the quantitative-qualitative analysis
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Seneca’s De Beneficiis and non-verbal politeness in ancient Rome Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-12-10 Jon Hall
Abstract This paper examines the philosophical treatise De Beneficiis written by Seneca the Younger (c. 4 bce to 65 ce) and discusses some of the insights that it offers regarding the pragmatics of interpersonal encounters in ancient Rome. In particular, it identifies types of appropriate and inappropriate non-verbal behaviour sometimes employed when making requests. Seneca’s close observation of these
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When please ceases to be polite Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-12-10 Eleanor Dickey
Abstract Latin sis, contracted from si uis (‘if you wish’) and commonly attached to imperatives in early Latin, is usually translated as ‘please’, but some scholars have seen it as urgent rather than polite. Here, an examination of all the examples of sis in early Latin (chiefly Plautus and Terence) demonstrates that it is neither polite nor urgent and indeed has no function in the politeness system
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Conceptualizations of linguistic politeness in Latin Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-12-10 Luis Unceta Gómez
Abstract This paper presents an analysis of conceptions of linguistic politeness in ancient Rome. Using lexical analysis, it scrutinizes first-order data recoverable from the Latin sources at our disposal, in order to determine the notions and dimensions of politeness that Romans were sensitive to. This kind of approach is helpful, primarily, when developing a suitable theoretical framework for dealing
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Politeness, gender and the social balance of the Homeric household Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-12-10 Francesco Mari
Abstract This paper focusses on the role of women within the Homeric household (οἶκος, “oikos”) as related to politeness. The social balance of the household has its fulcrum in the relation between the householder and his wife, and the latter has a crucial role in preserving the face of her husband and hence his authority in the oikos. In practice, to preserve his public image within the oikos, householders
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Chancery norms before Chancery English? Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-06-04 Olga Timofeeva
Abstract This study analyses two Old English formulae gret freodlice (‘greets in a friendly manner’) and ic cyðe eow þaet (‘I make it known to you that’), which form a salutation–notification template in a document type called writs. It connects the emergence of this formulaic set to previous oral traditions of delivering news and messages, and to their reflection in dictation practices from at least
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Review of Daybell, James & Andrew Gordon, eds (2016) Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450–1690 Journal of Historical Pragmatics (IF 0.625) Pub Date : 2019-06-04 Helen Newsome
This article reviews Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450–1690 978-1-47-247826-9