The nature of historical pragmatics

Theoretical discussions on the historical dimension in pragmatics have so far been conducted mainly, but not exclusively, in Romance and Germanic studies (cf. e.g. Apostel 1980; Bax 1981, 1983 and 1991; Cherubim 1980, 1984; Jucker 1994; Panagl 1977; Presch 1981; Schlieben-Lange 1975: 87, 1983; Schwarz 1984: 247-256; Stein 1985a). However, these theoretical discussions consist of no more than some programmatic remarks outlining the shape of a historical pragmatics in fairly broad terms. A far-reaching comprehensive debate on the historical perspective in pragmatics has not yet taken place. Those authors who have attempted to embark on this new discipline often fail not only to refer to each other but also to push the debate forward. So far, the potential of the historical dimension in pragmatics has been repeatedly touched upon, but the historical pragmatic plane has never really taken off.

Is this because linguists never felt a real need for such a new discipline? While some researchers (e.g. Cherubim 1980: 4) express that they have no doubts about the necessity and usefulness of a historical pragmatics, others (cf. e.g. Presch 1981: 213) ask what exactly a historically dimensioned pragmatics should be able to reveal. Obviously, when founding a science it is not enough to refer to its own value. We should have an idea about the feasibility of the new discipline. In the case of pragmatics it is reasonable to assume that communication in earlier periods can also be described in terms of pragmatic phenomena such as speech acts, implicature, politeness phenomena, or discourse markers.

However, not least because of the mismatch between theory and practice did attempts to lay the foundation for a comprehensive historical pragmatics misfire. Sitta's (1980) and Schlieben-Lange's (1983) arguments, for example, merely "combine broadly based programmatic comments with short practical applications" (Bergner 1992: 165). Thus a need for straightforward theoretical propositions which can be evaluated against results obtained by specific research efforts is imminent.

The lack of comprehensiveness is also due to problems arising in connection with the task of integrating a language-historical dimension and a pragmalinguistic dimension. One might think of two ways for such an integration: either historical linguistics becomes more pragmatic, or linguistic pragmatics becomes more historical (cf. Presch 1981: 230). In Sitta (1980) the new discipline under discussion is given two different labels. While in the title of his volume Sitta chooses pragmatische Sprachgeschichte (pragmatic historical linguistics), Cherubim picks the term historische Sprachpragmatik (historical linguistic pragmatics) for his programmatic article. The question then is whether both authors talk about the same thing (cf. Presch 1981: 230; Weigand 1988: 159). Are we dealing with a historical dimension in pragmatics or a pragmatic perspective in historical linguistics?

To solve this dilemma one might first try to outline what the two disciplines are possibly about. If we apply a pragmatic perspective to historical linguistics, we are simply interested in describing the development of a language, or the language change, as social acts of communicators under shifting historical circumstances (cf. Cherubim 1984: 809). In this context, the conditions leading to altered types of speech acts are of particular importance, e.g. aims, motives, interests, public and private behavior, institutions, formulae and rituals. Language change from a pragmatic point of view can thus be understood as a shift in (potential) human behavior (cf. Weigand 1988: 159).

If we add a historical dimension to pragmatics, we try to investigate language use over time. In most programmatic remarks it is suggested that the task of historical pragmatics is to describe pragmatically how language was used in former times as transmitted in historical texts (cf. e.g. Weigand 1988: 159). What types of rules, conditions, and functions of social acts were effective in earlier language stages or processes of language change (cf. Cherubim 1984: 807)? In short, historical pragmatics focuses more on language use, pragma-historical linguistics more on language change. The latter appears to be the more general approach (cf. also Cherubim 1984), while the former presents itself as a complementary subject and thus provides the raw material on language use relevant for the analysis of language change. As the title of this overview suggests, we shall here concentrate on the historical perspective in pragmatics, but this volume also contains articles that adopt a more pragma historical perspective, in particular the papers by de Lima, Bernardez and Tejada, Schwenter and Traugott, and Allen.

Historical pragmatics deals with changes in the linguistic structure resulting from altered communicative needs which are due to changes in the social structure (cf. Stein 1985b), or, in other words, with changes in traditions of language use resulting from changes in the situational context, e.g. the institutionalisation or a medium change (cf. Schlieben-Lange 1983). Hence the aims of a historically conceived pragmatics include

(1) the description and the understanding of conventions of language use in communities that once existed and that are no longer accessible for direct observation, and

(2) the description and the explanation of the development of speech conventions in the course of time (Bax 1981: 425; cf. also Bax 1991: 200).

However, historical pragmatics can also be used as a philological tool to explain literary artefacts from the past (cf. Bax 1983: 3). In fact,

Especially in the field of diachronic language development [...] it is pragmatics which could make important contributions to a linguistic solution of problems. This could be achieved by trying to illuminate the variety of relations between the respective linguistic signs, between linguistic sign and sign-user, as well as between the respective creator of the sign and its recipient (Bergner 1992: 163).