Methods in historical pragmatics (review)

The diversity of approaches informing the eleven essays in Methods in historical pragmatics indicates that what is termed 'historical pragmatics' is 'less well defined and constrained' than one might imagine (1). Although it is clear at least in principle that historical linguistics is the 'launching pad of historical pragmatics' (13), even Jucker's (2000:90) seemingly straightforward definition of the field as the 'study of historical data from a pragmatic perspective' opens the floodgates to the fuzziness of the designation 'pragmatics'. The editors' introduction, 'Historical pragmatics: What it is and how to do it', does not ultimately succeed in paving an unobstructed path for readers through a terminological maze encompassing 'new philology', 'historical discourse analysis', 'pragmaphilology', and 'diachronic pragmatics'. In their attempt to distinguish a variety of terms and intertwining branches of historical pragmatics, the editors appear to conflate historical pragmatics with historical discourse analysis, and they do not explain how either of these terms is distinct from what is referred to as 'pragmaphilological study' (7 et passim). Nevertheless, a certain amount of ground clearing is essential to decide what models and methods are relevant to the problem at hand, or as Romaine (1982:3) notes, even what the problem is. The book's title promises something more general than what is actually delivered in the remaining chapters, all of which deal specifically with the history of English texts.

The inventory of topics covered is nevertheless quite diverse, including, for instance, discourse markers, anaphora, connectives, address terms, text types, episode structure, genre conventions, speech acts, implicature, conversational structure, politeness, orality, and literacy. There has been much discussion about the extent to which contemporary pragmatic notions and principles are universal. THOMAS KOHNEN, in 'Text types and the methodology of diachronic speech act analysis', rightly observes that familiar analytical and theoretical concepts such as face, politeness, and so on cannot be uncritically applied to earlier periods. Moreover, the discursive norms for genres may change over time, as DAWN ARCHER shows in 'Developing a more detailed picture of the English courtroom (1640–1760): Data and methodological issues facing historical pragmatics'. Late seventeeth- and early eighteeth-century trials were very different from modern criminal trials in terms of the degree of involvement and roles of judges, defense counsels, and witnesses.

The two tables presenting the results of Kohnen's analysis of directives within the genre of sermons from Old English up to the twentieth century are very difficult to read (153–54). Too much information is given in each of the cells, some of which are footnoted, but one must go to the end of the chapter to read the footnotes. No general guidance about the layout is given in the table itself. A similar problem arises in MONIKA FLUDERNIK's two tables, which like Kohnen's are not self-explanatory; they appear in an appendix and are mentioned only in passing in the text of her chapter, 'Letters as narrative: Narrative patterns and episode structure in early letters, 1400 to 1650'. This essay is perhaps the most ambitious one, forming part of a much larger project on the evolution of narrative structure in various genres. The chapter focuses on twenty-three early letter collections to examine the shape of narrative episodes and provide an inventory of discourse markers. Narrative episodes turn out to be rare overall. Although Fludernik found no chronological increase in narrativity, more narratives tend to occur in the late-sixteenth-and seventeenth-century letters. Her results for discourse markers suggest that they depend more on genre than chronology. Further analysis would be required to substantiate this conclusion because the findings are presented in raw frequency counts per collection (each containing different numbers of letters and spanning a different time period) rather than in terms of rate of occurrence over time in relation to the number of words. Fludernik also does not define what she means by 'discourse marker', a term for which the classification varies...