Historical pragmatics - a challenge for the future of historical linguistics

 

Matylda Włodarczyk-Golka

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

 

In the last decade a range of new research questions have been posed for the study of the past stages of the language resulting in the gradual emergence of a distinct field labelled historical or diachronic pragmatics. In applying methodologies from the studies of present day languages to the domain of historical linguistics, the new area has gone beyond the traditional limitations inherent in the study of text-languages. Through a wide range of interdisciplinary explanations, historical pragmatic research sheds new light on the communication of the past, concentrating not only on the texts but primarily on the context of production and reception. Far from being a unified collection of research efforts, the new discipline remains open to accommodate any coherent linguistic explanation, particularly a one not confined to the conventional frames of linguistic theory. Unfortunately, historical pragmatics has so far only received a restricted amount of interest from the Polish researchers into linguistic history of English. This paper aims to present the main sub-disciplines of this highly diversified field on the basis of the relevant article collections and journals published in the last decade. Areas such as historical dialogue analysis, speech act analysis, studies of discourse markers, applications of politeness theory in the studies of linguistic past, genre studies, studies of ritual behaviour in language will be discussed to bring the wealth of perspectives to the attention of a student in the history of the English language.

 

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