Historical Sociopragmatics
Editor
Originally published as a special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10:2 (2009), this is the first book to map out historical sociopragmatics, a multidisciplinary field located within historical pragmatics, but overlapping with socially-oriented fields, such as sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. Historical sociopragmatics has a central focus on historical language use in its situational contexts, and how those situational contexts engender norms which speakers engage or exploit for pragmatic purposes. The chapters represent a range of ways in which historical sociopragmatics can be understood and investigated. The reader will find English texts from the 15th century through to the 18th, a variety of genres (including personal correspondence, trial proceedings and plays), and both qualitative and (corpus-based) quantitative analyses. Importantly, attention is given to how contexts can be (re)constructed from written records, a sine qua non of the field. It will appeal to advanced-level students and scholars with interests in pragmatics, especially socially-oriented pragmatics, and/or historical linguistics, especially the history of English.
[Benjamins Current Topics, 31] 2011. vii, 135 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 16 June 2011
Published online on 16 June 2011
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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About the Authors | pp. vii–viii
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Historical sociopragmatics: An introductionJonathan Culpeper | pp. 1–8
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Structures and expectations: A systematic analysis of Margaret Paston's formulaic and expressive languageJohanna L. Wood | pp. 9–36
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The sociopragmatics of a lovers' spat: The case of the eighteenth-century courtship letters of Mary Pierrepont and Edward WortleySusan Fitzmaurice | pp. 37–59
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Altering distance and defining authority: Person reference in Late Modern EnglishMinna Nevala | pp. 61–82
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Variation and change in patterns of self-reference in early English correspondenceMinna Palander-Collin | pp. 83–108
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Identifying key sociophilological usage in plays and trial proceedings (1640-1760): An empirical approach via corpus annotationDawn Archer and Jonathan Culpeper | pp. 109–132
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Index | pp. 133–135
“This is the first book to map out historical socio-pragmatics [...]. Overall, it could be said that the aim of the book, namely to raise the profile of historical sociopragmatics, give it more solidity and inspire future research efforts, has been achieved. [...] The selection and order of contributions results in a coherent and comprehensive volume of cutting-edge research. The range of methodologies employed and spectrum of linguistic features investigated make this volume a valuable resource for scholars in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, socio-pragmatics, social history and the history of English who want to familiarize themselves with recent methodological advances in the field. By offering a wide range of approaches and methodologies, the book opens the way to future research in the field of historical socio-pragmatics.”
Lelija Socanac, University of Zagreb, Croatia, on Linguist List 22.4944
“The volume is exceptionally rich in the range of approaches and concrete case-studies that demonstrate how different theoretical frameworks and methodological tools can be applied in a historical sociopragmatic investigation of written corpora.”
Polina Shvanyukova, Università di Bergamo, in The European English Messenger 23.1.2014
“The strength of the volume lies in its methodological rigour. The editor and all contributors pay utmost attention to the theoretical ramifications of the historical sociopragmatic approach, bringing the notion of context to the fore of their studies. At the same time they are sensitive to the neighbouring disciplines and approaches, as well as recognize difficulties embedded in reconstructing context for historical texts, be it on the basis of various external materials, corpus methods or more qualitative means of recovering interconnected layers of meanings. How to define context and what tools to apply to relate it to language use is still open to tests and discussion, which ensures a lively future for historical sociopragmatics.”
Joanna Kopaczyk, University of Edinburgh, on pragmatics-review.org (2.2, 2014)
“The chapters in this volume do an excellent job at showcasing how historical data can be exploited to yield new insights into the linguistic construction of social identities in the past and open new windows into the study of social change through language change. [...]
the methodologies that they employ and the rich conclusions they are able to reach testify to the potential of this type of research for other languages and periods from which historical data may be (made) available. They thus provide the impetus for researchers to both compile appropriate language corpora and refine the computational tools that can be used to analyze them. Assuming that this was another central aspiration of both the editor and the publisher of this volume, they can rest assured that their goal has been met.”
the methodologies that they employ and the rich conclusions they are able to reach testify to the potential of this type of research for other languages and periods from which historical data may be (made) available. They thus provide the impetus for researchers to both compile appropriate language corpora and refine the computational tools that can be used to analyze them. Assuming that this was another central aspiration of both the editor and the publisher of this volume, they can rest assured that their goal has been met.”
Marina Terkourafi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Vol. 17-1 (2013)
Cited by (27)
Cited by 27 other publications
Chen, Xinren & Mengxin Li
Fang, Xianming
2023. Chapter 4. Multimodality in refusals in English as a lingua franca. In Multimodal Im/politeness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 333], ► pp. 101 ff.
Orthaber, Sara
Orthaber, Sara
Mazzon, Gabriella
2022. Chapter 10. Shifting responsibility in passing information. In English Historical Linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 358], ► pp. 246 ff.
Hernández-Flores, Nieves
2021. Review of Paternoster & Fitzmaurice (2019): Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Pragmatics and Society 12:2 ► pp. 334 ff.
Leitner, Magdalena & Andreas H. Jucker
Mourad, Lina
Siromaa, Maarit & Mirka Rauniomaa
Baider, Fabienne H., Georgeta Cislaru & Chantal Claudel
Ehrhardt, Claus
Götz, Andrea
Mari, Francesco
2019. Politeness, gender and the social balance of the Homeric household. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 20:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
Meulenbroek, Peter & Leora R. Cherney
Marcus, Imogen
Archer, Dawn
2017. Context and historical (socio-)pragmatics twenty years on. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
Culpeper, Jonathan & Claire Hardaker
Hickey, Raymond
Sifianou, Maria & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
Spevak, Olga & Camille Denizot
2017. Chapter 1. Pragmatics in Latin and Ancient Greek. In Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek [Studies in Language Companion Series, 190], ► pp. 1 ff.
Avila-Ledesma, Nancy E. & Carolina P. Amador-Moreno
Zhou-min, Yuan
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Sociology
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General