Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Images and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?
- 1 Medieval Pragmatics: Philosophical and Grammatical Contexts
- 2 Interjections: Does Affect have Grammar
- 3 Allas Context
- 4 Alisoun’s Giggle, or the Miller Does Pragmatics
- 5 How Heretics Talk, According to Bernard Gui and William Thorpe
- 6 Margery Kempe’s Strategic Vague Language
- One More Thing
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Images and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?
- 1 Medieval Pragmatics: Philosophical and Grammatical Contexts
- 2 Interjections: Does Affect have Grammar
- 3 Allas Context
- 4 Alisoun’s Giggle, or the Miller Does Pragmatics
- 5 How Heretics Talk, According to Bernard Gui and William Thorpe
- 6 Margery Kempe’s Strategic Vague Language
- One More Thing
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This book recovers pragmatics within the history of medieval linguistics. The introduction outlines the study of pragmatics from a critical history of linguistics perspective, situating language study in a complex social field and comparing medieval pragmatic ideas and metapragmatics with assumptions in contemporary pragmatic theory. Pragmatics embraces communication, expression, and understanding; it prioritizes meaning, context, affect, and speaking position over formal grammar. Relevant texts for late medieval pragmatics include grammatical and logical texts, especially those by Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, and anonymous grammarians, and Peter (of) John Olivi. Other sources for medieval pragmatics include life narrative (Margery Kempe), poetry (Chaucer), and heresy records. Theoretical and everyday texts reveal provocative intersections of Latin and vernacular intellectual and religious cultures and different assumptions and ideologies concerning meaning, speech, and speakers. Across these heterogenous, sometimes antagonistic discursive fields, medieval intellectual history crosses paths with social history.
Keywords: critical history of linguistics, medieval pragmatics, pragmatics and semiotics, discourse theory
The history of linguistics and language study is a branch of intellectual history and an adjunct to the history of ideas. In modern times, histories of linguistics have usually adopted one of three approaches:
1 history of the development of “Linguistics” the discipline, as a sequence of Great Texts or Key Ideas from pre-Linguistics to present-day Linguistics (internal History A), or history of one or more developments within Linguistics the discipline, for instance, individual theories and terminology or a subfield or disciplinary paradigm (phonology, syntax, comparative-historical linguistics, transformational grammar, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, L2 acquisition, etc.) (internal History B);
2 history of the relations between ideas about language and language study, not restricted to Linguistics the discipline, and other intellectual, political, and social ideas, sometimes incorporating a critical perspective on language ideologies, epistemes, paradigms, or dominant and minority discourses which determine what is “linguistic” (the stuff) or “linguistics” (the subject) (intellectual History);
3 documentary history presenting the development of Linguistics the discipline with anthologies of ‘classic’ texts, interviews, memoires, or summaries (docu-History).
Most histories of linguistics take account of grammar, philosophy of language, historical materials, and the like. Few, however, expand the textual archive to include literature or primary documents in social history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Medieval Life of LanguageGrammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe, pp. 11 - 30Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021