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Pragmatics is the study of language use. It takes into account the social situation and communicative context in which linguistic phenomena occur, the interlocutors and their social relationship to each other as well as the cognitive processes the interlocutors go through in producing and interpreting what is being communicated. We often wish to communicate more than we actually put into words, thus creating 'hidden meanings' that we expect our addressee to 'decode' and understand. We use various kinds of speech acts (such as requesting, apologising, paying compliments, etc.), and discourse markers. We can reasonably assume that (at least some of) these existed in earlier times as well and were phrased and used differently at different periods. Their development largely depends on the socio-cultural norms of the society from which they originate as well as various linguistic processes. The same is true for text types: They have changed over time and their development must be analysed in their contemporary socio-cultural context. Private letters, for example, initially followed very rigid patterns in terms of form and contents, which started to change/'loosen' as literacy spread and private persons stopped being dependent on the help of the local clergyman to write their letters for them but were able to do it themselves, thus gradually personalising them.
Historical pragmatic analysis provides concepts and methodologies to trace such developments over time, in some cases actually enabling us to witness the 'birth' of a text type or a linguistic phenomenon.
This course will consist of two parts: First, we will familiarise ourselves with some of the methodologies for conducting historical pragmatic analyses. This theoretical part will be followed by a practical part. The practical part will have a cultural and a linguistic focus: We will acquaint ourselves with various aspects of English society and culture from the fifteenth century onwards and analyse linguistic data in context, thus enriching our knowledge and understanding of both language (use) and culture. |
