The aim of this course is to give an introduction to the emerging field of historical pragmatics.
Pragmatics generally deals with how language is used in specific contexts, and how speakers comprehend and produce utterances in different speech situations. Important aspects of pragmatics include the Cooperative Principle, speech act theory, and theories of politeness. A central concern of the course is how these theories might be applied to diachronic language data.
Historical pragmatics itself is a field at the intersection of pragmatics and historical linguistics. It tries to answer questions such as:
How did Chaucer's or Shakespeare's contemporaries greet each other?, or:
Who said thou/thee to whom and who used the more distanced ye/you?
After a short recapitulation of the history of English and an overview of the field of pragmatics, these and other interesting issues will be addressed in the second half of the course.
Pragmatics generally deals with how language is used in specific contexts, and how speakers comprehend and produce utterances in different speech situations. Important aspects of pragmatics include the Cooperative Principle, speech act theory, and theories of politeness. A central concern of the course is how these theories might be applied to diachronic language data.
Historical pragmatics itself is a field at the intersection of pragmatics and historical linguistics. It tries to answer questions such as:
How did Chaucer's or Shakespeare's contemporaries greet each other?, or:
Who said thou/thee to whom and who used the more distanced ye/you?
After a short recapitulation of the history of English and an overview of the field of pragmatics, these and other interesting issues will be addressed in the second half of the course.
- Dozent: Patrick Maiwald