This  is  the  final  pre-­publication  draft  that  appeared  as:  Culpeper,  Jonathan  (2009)  Historical  sociopragmatics:  An

 introduction.  Journal  of  

Historical  Pragmatics10  (2):  153-­160.  It  may  contain  typos  and  other  minor  infelicities.  ©  Culpeper  
 

Historical  sociopragmatics:  
An  introduction  

Jonathan  Culpeper    
Lancaster  University,  UK  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1.   What  is  sociopragmatics?  

An  answer  to  the  question  of  the  title  will  depend  in  part  of  one's  view  of  pragmatics.  What  is  
often  identified  as  the  Continental  European  view  of  pragmatics  involves  a  "general  
cognitive,  social,  and  cultural  perspective  on  linguistic  phenomena  in  relation  to  their  usage  
in  forms  of  behaviour"  (Verschueren  1999:  7).  In  this  very  broad  view,  all  phenomena  
encompassed  by  pragmatics  are  social.  Thus,  the  label  "sociopragmatics"  seems  redundant,  
unless  we  are  to  argue  that  sociopragmatics  is  that  part  of  pragmatics  that  involves  a  greater  
emphasis  on  the  social.  Sociopragmatics  has  a  more  clearly  defined  heritage  in  the  Anglo-­
American  view  of  pragmatics  (see,  for  example,  Horn  and  Ward  2004),  where  pragmatics  is  
considered  another  component  in  a  theory  of  language,  distinct  from  other  components  in  its  
concern  with  context.  Here,  sociopragmatics  can  be  clearly  traced  to  the  work  of  Geoffrey  
Leech  (e.g.  1983)  and  Jenny  Thomas  (1981,  1983).  Leech  distinguishes  three  areas  of  
pragmatics:  "general  pragmatics",  concerning  "the  general  conditions  of  the  communicative  
use  of  language"  (1983:  10);;  "sociopragmatics",1  concerning  "more  specific  ‘local’  conditions  
on  language  use"  (1983:  10);;  and  "pragmalinguistics",  concerning  "the  particular  resources  
which  a  given  language  provides  for  conveying  particular  illocutions"  (1983:  11).2  Leech  
(1983:  11)  displays  the  relationships  between  these  areas  in  a  diagram,  reproduced  as  Figure  
1.  
 

 
2      Jonathan  Culpeper  
 
 
Figure  1.    Pragmatics:  general  pragmatics,  pragmalinguistics  and  sociopragmatics  (Leech  
1983:  11)  
           
General  pragmatics  

         [Grammar]   Pragmalinguistics   Sociopragmatics   [Sociology]  

Related  to   Related  to  

 
 
Perhaps  the  key  problem  with  Leech’s  definition  of  sociopragmatics  is  that  it  neglects  to  spell  
out  what  these  ‘local’  social  conditions  might  be.  How  local  is  local?  Perhaps  the  way  out  of  
this  problem  is  to  remember  that  Leech  refers  to  "specific"  local  conditions.  With  this  in  
mind,  one  could  say  that  sociopragmatics  concerns  itself  with  any  aspect  of  the  social  context  
that  is  specific  to  the  pragmatic  meanings  of  particular  language  use.3    
  Such  a  definition  of  sociopragmatics  is  not  entirely  satisfactory.  One  reason  for  this  is  
that  if  we  are  only  concerned  with  the  specific  and  the  particular,  there  is  not  much  for  the  
academic  to  do,  as  one  can  never  make  claims  beyond  the  particulars  of  the  data  in  hand.  
Moreover,  in  order  to  understand  the  specific,  one  needs  to  understand  the  more  general  
norms.  A  focal  point  for  sociopragmatics  is  the  way  in  which  speakers  exploit  more  general  
norms  to  generate  particular  meanings,  take  up  particular  social  positionings,  and  so  on.  
Another  reason  is  that  aspects  of  the  social  context  called  upon  are  not  all  equal  in  terms  of  
generality.  One  might  postulate  that  the  immediate  text  and  co-­text  of  interlocutors  is  the  
most  local;;  the  social  situation  (including  speech  events,  activity  types,  frames,  etc.)  is  
medial;;  and  cultures  (national/regional  cultures,  institutional  cultures,  etc.)  tend  to  be  the  
most  general  (the  same  three  contextual  levels  are  referred  to  in  Fitzmaurice  this  volume,  and  
can  be  related  to  levels  referred  to  in  Wood  this  volume).  I  would  argue  that  sociopragmatics  
should  primarily,  though  not  exclusively,  concern  itself  with  the  medial  context  and  the  
phenomena  that  constitute  it.  Social  situations  can  provide  a  link  between  micro,  more  
linguistically-­oriented  considerations  (the  typical  focus  of  pragmalinguistics),  and  macro,  
more  sociologically-­oriented  considerations  (the  typical  focus  of  a  field  such  as  Critical  
Discourse  Analysis).  
  Before  turning  to  historical  issues,  it  is  worth  briefly  considering  a  closely  related  
field  of  study  –  sociolinguistics.  Nevalainen  and  Raumolin-­Brunberg  (2003:  17-­8),  following  
Dittmar  (1997:  99-­100),  suggest  that  sociolinguistics  encompasses  work  falling  into  three  
different  areas:  social  dialectology  (i.e.  variationist  sociolinguistics),  interactional  
sociolinguistics  and  the  sociology  of  language.  In  some  respects,  these  parallel  the  three  
different  levels  of  context  I  outlined  above,  moving  from  the  more  micro  to  the  more  macro,  
from  the  more  linguistic  to  the  more  sociological.  It  is  no  surprise  then  that  work  in  
interactional  sociolinguistics,  with  its  medial  level  contextual  concerns,  can  and  often  does  
overlap  with  work  in  sociopragmatics  (the  best  known  example  being  Brown  and  Levinson  
                                                                Historical  sociopragmatics:  An  introduction       3  
1987,  a  work  on  politeness  that  is  frequently  cited  in  pragmatics  but  was  published  in  an  
interactional  sociolinguistic  series).  It  is  important  to  remember,  however,  that  
sociopragmatics  is  not  simply  concerned  with  mapping  regular  patterns  of  usage  in  
interaction,  as  might  characterize  much  work  in  sociolinguistics,  but  with  understanding  how  
those  regular  patterns  are  used  and  exploited  in  particular  interactions.  
 
 
2.  What  is  historical  sociopragmatics?  
 
Historical  sociopragmatics  does  not  fit  varieties  of  historical  pragmatics  leaning  towards  
historical  linguistics,  with  their  focus  on  particular  linguistic  forms  and  "internal"  issues  of  
language  change.  This  means  that  it  is  not  the  "pragma-­historical  linguistics"  of  Jacobs  and  
Jucker’s  (1995)  scheme,  the  "discourse-­oriented  historical  linguistics"  of  Brinton’s  (2001)  
scheme,  or  the  more  "micro"  work  of  Arnovick’s  (1999)  scheme.  Historical  sociopragmatics  
is  much  more  at  home  amongst  philological  approaches,  which  typically  consider  linguistic  
features  and  account  for  their  role  in  relation  to  the  text  in  which  they  appear  and/or  
context(s)  of  that  text.  This  means  that  it  fits  the  "pragmaphilology"  of  Jacobs  and  Jucker’s  
(1995)  scheme,  the  "historical  discourse  analysis  proper"  of  Brinton’s  (2001)  scheme,  and  
"macro"  work  of  Arnovick’s  (1999)  scheme.  Central  examples  of  historical  sociopragmatics,  
which  can  also  be  described  as  pragmaphilological,  include  studies  which  not  only  describe  
the  relationship  between  language  and  its  contexts,  particularly  the  medial  situational  context,  
but  which  also  deploy  theoretical  concepts  by  which  that  relationship  can  be  treated.  For  
instance,  Culpeper  and  Semino  (2000)  use  Levinson’s  (1992  [1979])  notion  of  "activity  type"  
to  explain  how  presumed  witches’  curses  were  constructed  and  understood  in  early  modern  
England,  particularly  in  courtroom  discourse;;  Bax  (2001)  uses  Goffman’s  (1974)  notion  of  
"frame",  a  similar  notion  to  activity  type,  to  analyze  the  opening  scene  of  a  seventeenth-­
century  Dutch  play.  Both  studies  are  primarily  synchronic,  as  are  most  pragmaphilological  
studies.  Other  important  theoretical  notions  central  to  historical  sociopragmatics  include:  (1)  
situated  roles  and  identities,  (2)  relational  notions  such  as  "face"  and  "face-­work",  rights  and  
obligations,  power,  social  distance  and  affect,  and  (3)  attitudes  and  opinions.  
Can  historical  sociopragmatics  be  diachronic?  The  answer  is  yes.  Firstly,  an  area  of  
historical  sociopragmatics  which  is  diachronic  is  clearly  demarcated  in  Jacobs  and  Jucker’s  
(1995)  scheme.  According  to  them,  diachronic  pragmatics  involves  studying  change  in  
pragmatic  phenomena  over  time,  focussing  on  "the  linguistic  inventory  and  its  
communicative  use  across  different  historical  stages  of  the  same  language"  (Jacobs  and  
Jucker  1995:  11).  Some  studies  constituting  "pragmalinguistic  diachronic  pragmatics"  
proceed  on  a  "form  to  function"  basis  (i.e.  they  consider  how  a  particular  form  has  undergone  
functional  change).  Other  studies  constituting  "sociopragmatic  diachronic  pragmatics"  
proceed  on  a  "function  to  form"  basis  (i.e.  they  consider  how  a  particular  function  has  
changed  the  forms  it  employs).  Examples  of  the  latter  include  tracking  particular  speech  act  
functions  (Arnovick  1999;;  some  papers  in  Jucker  and  Taavitsainen  2008)  or  particular  social  
functions  such  as  (im)politeness  (some  papers  in  Culpeper  and  Kádár  forthcoming).  In  fact,  
there  is  no  reason  why  a  diachronic  historical  sociopragmatics  has  to  be  confined  to  "function  
to  form"  studies.  Archer  and  Culpeper  (this  volume)  argue  that  an  entirely  different  
methodological  approach  with  a  contextual  starting  point,  which  they  label  "sociophilology",  
is  possible  and  that  this  can  be  applied  either  synchronically  or  diachronically  (see  section  3  
4      Jonathan  Culpeper  
for  a  brief  description  of  this  approach).  Secondly,  the  boundary  between  pragmaphilology  
and  diachronic  pragmatics  is  fuzzy.  Many  pragmaphilological  studies,  mention  diachronic  
issues,  typically  by  citing  other  studies  of  the  same  linguistic  phenomena  for  other  periods  
(rather  than  undertaking  the  research  themselves).  Assuming  that  the  methodology  is  
comparable,  a  number  of  pragmaphilological  studies  can  begin  to  comprise  a  diachronic  
picture.  For  example,  Hope  (1993),  Busse  (2002),  Walker  (2007)  and  many  other  works  have  
contributed  to  the  diachronic  description  of  the  English  second-­person  pronouns  you  and  thou  
by  elaborating  on  their  usage  in  specific  genres  (mostly  witness  depositions  and  drama)  in  
specific  periods.  
  In  sum,  historical  sociopragmatics  concerns  itself  with  any  interaction  between  
specific  aspects  of  social  context  and  particular  historical  language  use  that  leads  to  pragmatic  
meanings.  Its  central  focus  is  on  language  use  in  its  situational  context,  and  how  those  
situational  contexts  engender  norms  which  speakers  engage  or  exploit  for  pragmatic  
purposes.  It  can  be  either  synchronic,  describing  and  tracing  how  language  use  shapes  and  is  
shaped  by  context  at  a  particular  point  of  time  in  the  past,  or  diachronic,  describing  and  
tracing  how  over  time  shifts  in  language  use  shape  context,  shifts  in  context  shape  language  
use,  and/or  shifts  occur  in  the  relationship  between  language  use  and  context.  An  important  
issue  for  historical  sociopragmatics  concerns  the  (re)construction  of  contexts  on  the  basis  of  
written  records.  This  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  the  field.  Whilst  researchers  do  have  recourse  to  
research  conducted  by  social  historians,  it  must  be  remembered  that  much  of  that  research  is  
(a)  itself  underpinned  by  written  documents,  and  (b)  often  insufficiently  detailed  to  assist  in  
understanding  the  rich  dynamics  of  particular  situations.  A  focus  then  is  also  on  how  
historical  texts  carry  evidence  of  or  even,  especially  in  the  case  of  fictional  texts,  project  their  
own  contexts.  Such  evidence  includes  comments  on  aspects  of  the  context,  metapragmatic  
comments,  and  participant  reactions  and  responses.  Some  studies,  for  example,  focus  
specifically  on  how  the  identities  of  individuals  or  groups  are  embedded  in  multiple  
discourses  in  a  single  text,  deploying,  for  example,  frameworks  of  speech  presentation  (e.g.  
Collins  2001;;  Palander-­Collin  and  Nevala  2006;;  Culpeper  and  Kytö  forthcoming:  chapter  3).  
 

3.   The  papers  
The  papers  that  constitute  this  special  issue  have  not  been  selected  because  they  follow  a  
particular  line,  nor  has  a  line  been  dictated  for  them  to  follow.  Instead,  they  represent  
different  ways  in  which  historical  sociopragmatics  can  be  understood  and  pursued,  though  
they  all  fit  the  description  of  historical  sociopragmatics  given  in  the  previous  paragraph.  
Together  they  constitute  the  first  collection  of  papers  to  knowingly  contribute  to  historical  
sociopragmatics.  Of  course,  five  papers  cannot  capture  the  full  diversity  of  research  efforts  
that  constitute  the  field.  Nevertheless,  as  far  as  methodology  is  concerned,  they  aim  to  show  
that  diversity  is  possible.  Historical  sociopragmatics  need  not  be  conducted  solely  through  
qualitative  analyses.  Broadly  speaking,  the  papers  of  this  issue  are  organised  so  that  they  vary  
from  the  more  qualitative  to  the  more  quantitative.  More  generally,  the  aims  of  this  issue  are  
to  raise  the  profile  of  historical  sociopragmatics,  give  it  more  solidity  and  inspire  future  
research  efforts.  
  In  the  first  paper  of  the  issue,  Wood  examines  the  late  15th  century  letters  of  Margaret  
Paston,  focusing  in  particular  on  local  contexts  and  expectations  flowing  from  them.  She  
                                                                Historical  sociopragmatics:  An  introduction       5  
draws  input  from  Tannen’s  (1993)  work  on  frame  analysis,  and  also  from  Fairclough's  (1992)  
work  on  discursive  and  social  practices.  Wood  probes  the  notion  of  local  context,  in  particular  
placing  it  in  the  context  of  more  macro,  sociological  notions  of  context  encompassed  within  
the  field  of  Critical  Discourse  Analysis.  Methodologically,  whilst  deploying  some  
quantitative  analyses  to  reveal  formulaic  language,  most  analyses  are  qualitative.  An  
innovation  here  is  that  Wood  uses  the  meta-­commentary  of  participants  (their  evaluations,  for  
example)  to  reveal  their  perspective  on  what  would  count  as  normal  or  expected  (e.g.  a  son's  
acknowledgement  of  a  letter  from  his  mother  within  a  reasonable  timeframe).  Like  Wood,  
Fitzmaurice’s  paper  is  also  qualitative  in  methodological  terms,  and,  similar  to  Wood,  the  
paper  uses  the  participants’  commentary,  but  specifically  their  responses,  as  a  source  of  
evidence  of  their  understandings.  She  examines  the  eighteenth-­century  courtship  conducted  in  
the  letters  of  Mary  Pierrepont  and  Edward  Wortley,  focusing  in  particular  on  the  
sociopragmatic  roles  afforded  the  participants  in  their  corresponding  activity  and  on  how  
sociopragmatic  meanings  expressed  by  participants  might  be  reconstructed.  What  makes  this  
courtship  corresponding  activity  somewhat  different  is  that  it  was  illicit,  and  hence  some  of  
the  usual  conventions  did  not  apply,  thus  calling  for  some  rather  complex  negotiating  of  role  
relationships.  This  paper  is  a  demonstration  of  how  Relevance  theory  (Sperber  and  Wilson  
1995)  can  be  deployed  in  the  elucidation  of  the  complex  interactions  between  language  and  
contexts.  It  also  acts  as  a  warning  that  the  analyst  must  carefully  consider  the  historical  
evidence  in  order  to  ascertain  the  credibility  of  an  interpretation.  
The  following  two  papers,  by  Nevala  and  Palander-­Collin,  begin  with  quantitative  
analyses,  which  act  as  a  backdrop  against  which  the  particular  sociopragmatic  usage  of  
individuals  and  groups  can  be  explored.  Nevala  considers  how  social  identities  and  
interpersonal  relationships  are  encoded  in  the  use  of  referential  terms  in  Late  Modern  English,  
drawing  data  from  the  Corpus  of  Early  English  Correspondence  Extension  and  other  sources.  
She  focuses  on  third  person  referential  terms  but  shows  how  these  have  implications  for  
social  identities  mediated  between  both  the  addresser  and  the  addressee.  She  also  examines  
the  term  friend.  Her  study  shows  how  all  these  items  are  influenced  by  the  interpersonal  
authority  and  distance  pertaining  between  the  participants.  More  specifically,  and  of  central  
importance  to  sociopragmatics,  she  shows  how  people  in  situ  exploit  referential  encodings  in  
order  to  engineer  specific  social  positionings,  and  how  people  engage  in  tricky  linguistic  
juggling  acts  as  they  attend  to  multiple,  and  sometimes  conflicting,  social  pressures.  
Palander-­Collin  also  focuses  on  referential  expressions,  but  specifically  on  the  self-­referential  
first-­person  pronoun  I  and  its  usage  in  the  Corpus  of  Early  English  Correspondence  and  its  
Extension.  Taking  inspiration  from  Mühlhäusler  and  Harré’s  (1990)  claim  that  I  not  only  
indexes  the  speaker  or  writer  in  place  and  time  but  also  situates  him  or  her  in  the  moral  order  
of  speaking  as  the  person  responsible  for  what  is  uttered,  she  examines  what  participants  
could  attribute  to  themselves,  and  how  that  might  vary  in  family  and  non-­family  letters,  
across  time,  and  other  contexts  where  the  participants’  rights  and  obligations  might  also  be  
different.  She  stresses  the  importance  of  integrating  macro-­social  structures  with  local  
practices  in  understanding  meanings,  and  discusses  self-­reference  in  the  light  of  early  modern  
socio-­historical  research.  One  particular  methodological  innovation  is  that  she  uses  the  cluster  
facility  in  WordSmith  Tools  to  reveal  the  words  that  frequently  co-­occur  with  the  pronoun  I.  
The  final  paper  in  this  issue  is  the  most  thoroughly  quantitative,  yet  also  the  one  which  
is  most  context-­driven.  Archer  and  Culpeper  argue  that  there  is  another  approach  to  the  study  
of  historical  pragmatics  beyond  those  explicitly  mentioned  in  Jacobs  and  Jucker  (1995).  By  
6      Jonathan  Culpeper  
using  a  specially  annotated  corpus,  they  use  the  contextual  categories  captured  by  a  set  of  tags  
appended  to  participants’  utterances  to  discover  how  context  is  shaping  language  use.  They  
label  this  approach  "sociophilology".  More  specifically,  they  use  the  Sociopragmatic  Corpus  
(1640-­1760),  an  annotated  subsection  of  comedy  plays  and  drama  proceedings  taken  from  the  
Corpus  of  Dialogues  1560-­1760.  They  conduct  a  "keyness  analysis"  as  a  means  of  identifying  
the  statistically-­based  style  markers,  or  key  items,  associated  with  a  number  of  social  role  
dyads  (including  examiner  to  examined  in  trials  and  master/mistress  to  servant  in  plays),  and  
reveal  differential  distributions  of  personal  pronouns,  interjections,  imperative  verbs,  
politeness  formulae,  and  so  on.  In  a  more  qualitative  fashion,  they  scrutinise  these  results  for  
pragmatic  meanings,  and  in  particular  point  out  how  their  results  establish  local  contextual  
norms  which  can  be  exploited  to  generate  particular  meanings  and  effects.    
 

Notes
 
1
 In  his  1983  book,  Leech  writes  "socio-­pragmatics"  with  a  hyphen.  In  more  recent  years,  it  is  generally  solid.    
2
  Leech   (1983:   18,   footnote   13)   actually   attributes   the   formulation   of   the   pragmalinguistic   /   sociopragmatic  
distinction  to  Thomas  (1981,  1983).  
3
 The  word  "particular"  is  necessary  here,  in  order  to  distinguish  sociopragmatics  from  what  Leech  sees  as  the  
general  role  of  pragmatics,  that  is,  "meaning  in  relation  to  the  speech  situation"  (1983:  15).  

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About  the  author  

Jonathan  Culpeper  is  a  senior  lecturer  in  the  Department  of  Linguistics  and  
English  Language  at  Lancaster  University,  UK.  His  work  spans  pragmatics,  
stylistics  and  the  history  of  English.  Publications  include  History  of  English  
(2nd  edn.,  2005)  and  Language  and  Characterisation  in  Plays  and  Other  Texts  
(2001).  Corpora  and  Corpus  Linguistics  underpin  much  of  his  work.