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Introduction
Years ago, people did not really study how our ways of talking and writing
have changed over time. However, since a big book by van Dijk in 1985,
many researchers have started to explore this area. They have called it
different names like "New Philology" and "historical discourse analysis."
These studies look at how people communicated in the past in different
languages and think about why this kind of study is important. They try to
connect the study of language history with the study of how we use
language to communicate, showing how these two areas can help each
other and maybe even come together.
The development of this field has been influenced by three key factors. The
initial breakthrough came from addressing the issue of data scarcity.
Historically, the challenge in analyzing past dialogues and spoken narratives
was the absence of recorded conversations from ancient times. However,
the introduction of extensive and focused digital collections, which offer
easier access to historical texts resembling spoken language, has
significantly changed the situation. This advancement has enabled
researchers to explore written works from the past that mirror everyday
speech, overcoming a significant hurdle in historical discourse analysis.
The second and third enabling factors involve the expansions of the fields
out of which historical discourse arises. On the one hand, in discourse
analysis, it has increasingly been recognized that the techniques of
discourse analysis can legitimately be applied to written language and
that written texts constitute “communicative acts in their own right”
(Jucker, 2008: 896). On the other hand, historical linguistics has come to
focus more on usage, including every day and ephemeral usage
(əˈfem(ə)rəl) رسي ع الزوال, to recognize varieties and genre-specific
conventions, to evoke pragmatic and inferential explanations of change,
and to acknowledge the importance of context.
This lecture will not detail every topic within discourse analysis, but
broadly, it is seen as the study of naturally flowing spoken or written
communication, focusing on how sentences connect above the individual
sentence level, according to Stubbs (1983). It looks at the overall structure
and elements that link sentences together rather than just local sentence
features. While not precisely distinguishing between discourse analysis and
pragmatics, this talk will lean more towards examining formal text
structures, like discourse markers, over the conceptual parts of text
meaning, such as presuppositions or conversational rules, or how language
is used. Therefore, it will not cover certain topics in historical pragmatics,
particularly those about changes over time in conversational habits,
politeness expressions, or the organization of speech events.
Discourse markers can be found not only in the initial position. Depending
on the information structure they can occupy several positions: at the
beginning of an utterance, as “insertions” in the utterance or at the end.
e.g., a) Blanche: Oh, I feel so good after my long, hot bath, I feel so good
and cool and – rested! (TW, 1432)
b) Blanche: Of course, he – he doesn’t know – I mean I haven’t informed
him – of my real age! (TW, 1419)
c) Blanche: I’ve got to write it down – the message, I mean…
Bravo Cladera (2001) analyzed the use of the discourse markers in the
Spanish language dialogue. She found that discourse markers appear in
three positions. They initiate the turn at talk – initial markers (IM), they
mark the central part of the turn – corpus markers (CM), and they mark the
end of the turn – terminal markers (TM). e.g., Natalia: But sure, we want to
do it, aaand … I don’t want to start at the university at once, because I want
to take it easy, for a year at least, aaaaand besides I don’t’ know what to
study. Alcira: And besides, it’s difficult. (translated into English, Bravo
Cladera, 7).
In the example above and besides in Alcira’s turn is an IM, and, because and
‘and’ besides in Natalia’s turn mark the central part of the turn. In the
following example then marks the end of the turn.
e.g., Veronica: and you, what did you do?
Carlos: me, um… nothing. I stayed at home. The telephone was
disconnected, so when my friends called, they could not reach me then.
(translated into English, Bravo Cladera, 10).
The scholar (op.cit./ in the cited work,) argues that pragmatic markers are
interpretable in relation to propositional meaning, which is fundamental to
the interpretation, analysis and understanding of pragmatic markers. It is
not always easy to classify linguistic material as internal or external to
propositions. He argues that some pragmatic markers affect the
propositional meaning of utterances, though not necessarily as conceptual
constituents of propositions but as constraints on their interpretation. The
diachronic development of those items, which become pragmatic markers
is relevant to this issue. The scholar suggests that their problematic status
can be explained with respect to the processes of grammaticalization which
they are involved in.
Aijmer (2002) also argues that many of the features of discourse markers
(especially their multifunctionality) can be explained as a result of
grammaticalization (either complete or ongoing). By grammaticalization
Aijmer (2002, 16) means the process “whereby lexical items or phrases
come through frequent use in certain highly constrained local contexts to
be reanalyzed as having syntactic and morphological functions, and, once
grammaticalised, continue to develop grammaticalised functions”. The
linguist illustrates the process of grammaticalization by ‘indeed’. This word
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becomes “integrated into the relatively tight lexical field of epistemic
sentence-adverbs” (op.cit., 17) with the meaning “certainly”. Then, it
acquires a contrastive function, especially after but. As a clause-initial
discourse marker indeed has meanings involving elaboration and
clarification of the discourse intent. The development from adverb to
discourse marker, as the scholar writes, reflects a tendency to use
propositional material for the purposes of creating texts and indicating
attitudes in discourse situations and results in an increase of pragmatic
significance and expressiveness.
It is understandable that a single discourse marker can have more than one
function. Some surveys assign the role of cohesive devices to discourse
markers (Schiffrin, 1987), others focus on their role as speaker attitude
expressives (Andersen, 2001), yet others believe that they are devices for
acknowledging and highlighting the speaker-hearer relationship and
increasing politeness.
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Some scholars tend to classify discourse markers in terms of sharply
defined categories, which is not precise, as we know that the markers are
multifunctional and are difficult to put in a particular category. Andersen
(2001) claims that discourse markers are not only multifunctional in the
sense that they can have different pragmatic functions in different
contexts; they are also multifunctional in the sense that they can take up
multiple functions in one and the same context. So, as any other structural
words (e.g., conjunctions) discourse markers fulfil certain functions in
discourse.
Discourse studies have delved into the role of aspectual forms. Following
grounding principles, Hopper (1979: 219–26) suggests that in Old English
narratives, the foreground typically features perfective aspect verbs
indicating singular, dynamic, punctual, and telic events, while the
background utilizes imperfective aspect verbs denoting states or
durative/iterative/habitual atelic processes. Richardson examines other
aspectual forms in Old English, suggesting that "nonperfective" forms, such
as motion, perception, and ingressive verbs accompanied by infinitives,
signal new episodes, accelerate actions for dramatic effect, and establish
point of view. Additionally, the perfect tense in Middle English serves to
mark narrative progression.
boundaries (1994). I argue that ME inchoative gan ‘began’ serves a
demarcating function and slows the narrative down, while perfective anon
‘at once, immediately’ marks salient action and speeds a narrative up
(Brinton, 1996). Finally, a number of studies have also suggested discourse
functions for EModE ‘do’ as a peak marker, information focuser, or event
foregrounder (Stein, 1985a; Wright, 1989).
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expressive functions (e.g., expressing evaluation or point of view), and
metalinguistic functions (e.g., signaling text type).
2.5.1 Pronominal Forms
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not be adequate for a classification of texts from the past, since
conventions of genre are defined by a variety of factors, including forms of
the language, topic, situation, and medium. Fries asserts, for example, that
“it must not be taken for granted that text-linguistic rules for present-day
English are also valid for the older periods of the language” (1983: 1013).
Questions of differences of textual conventions fall under what Jacobs and
Jucker (1995: 11) call “pragmaphilology,” or “the contextual aspects of
historical texts, including the addressers and addressees, their social and
personal relationship, the physical and social setting of text production
and text reception, and the goal(s) of the text.”
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surface structures with equivalent cognitive content” in terms of factors
such as theme, focus, and dominance; in other words, whenever two or
more (synonymous) syntactic forms exist, there are pragmatic reasons for
using one rather than the other. He believes that syntactic change can be
explained in terms of pragmatic syntax, for if a new form appears and
becomes pragmatically more useful, it may lead to syntactic restructuring,
or what Faarlund calls the “grammaticalization of pragmatics” (1985: 366–
8, 386). As an example of such change, he discusses the change from OV to
VO word order in Germanic. The rightward movement of the object should
not be explained as a rare and highly marked afterthought, but by a
universal pragmatic principle of focusing.
2.6.3 Grammaticallization
More recently, it has come to be recognized that discourse factors play a
role in the process of grammaticalization. A widely accepted view of
grammaticalization is that rather than involving semantic “bleaching” (loss
of meaning) or metaphor, as has traditionally been assumed, it involves a
change from conversational to conventional implicature; that is, a
conversational implicature arising in certain local discourse contexts
becomes “semanticized,” or assimilated as part of the conventional
meaning of the grammaticalized word. This type of change has been called
“pragmatic strengthening” or “strengthening of informativeness”
(Traugott and König, 1991; Hopper and Traugott, 1993: 63ff; Traugott,
1995b).
Numerous examples of the role of conversational implicature in
grammaticalization have been adduced by Traugott, primarily from the
history of English. An instance of such a semantic shift is the change from
temporal to causal meaning in the grammaticallization of OE si^^an ‘since’
from adverb to conjunction, from the meaning ‘from the time that’ to the
meaning ‘because’, which results from semanticization of the meaning of
‘cause’ which arises in certain contexts. Working within the same
framework, Carey (1994), considering the early grammaticalization of the
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perfect in OE, sees the shift from stative (adjectival) to perfect (verbal)
meaning, that is, from present state of an object to past process performed
on an object, as the conventionalization of an invited inference.
The third type of historical discourse analysis is one which examines the
evolution of discourse marking over time, whether focusing on the
development of individual discourse markers or on changes in systems of
discourse marking.
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Tendencies I and II are metaphorically driven, while tendency III is
metonymically driven, involving an increase in informativeness or a
conventionalizing of conversational implicature (see above). Tendency III
results in “subjectification,” or “the development of a grammatically
identifiable expression of speaker belief and speaker attitude toward
what is said” (Traugott 1995b: 32).
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3. Syntactic fixation: loss of syntactic variability and occupation of a fixed
slot (but see Traugott, 1995b);
4. “divergence” (Hopper, 1991) or “split”: retention of full lexical
characteristics in some contexts alongside grammaticalization in other
contexts; and
5. “layering” (Hopper, 1991): continuation of older, more highly
grammaticalized forms next to newer, less grammaticalized forms.
Despite the changes in discourse forms over time or their loss, there would
nonetheless seem to be a continuity of pragmatic functions over time,
with the forms expressing discourse functions – forms which seem to be
intrinsically ephemeral (see Stein, 1985a) – continually being replaced; this
process of “renewal” is characteristic of grammaticalization (Hopper,
1991).
2.7.3 Changes in Text Types
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Stein (1985b: 351) argues that the study of text types has always possessed
a historical dimension, but previous research on changes in discourse or
genre has predominantly focused on shifts from oral to written
communication. However, Biber and Finegan (1989, 1992) have taken a
broader approach, analyzing changes across various written and spoken
genres in English. They observe a trend where all genres have shifted
towards more "oral" characteristics, such as increased use of private verbs,
first and second-person pronouns, and contractions, as opposed to more
"literate" features. Atkinson (1992) further supports this trend by analyzing
medical research writing from 1735 to 1985, which shows a progression
towards more informational and less narrative styles. Similarly, Görlach
(1992) examines changes in cookery books from Middle English to the
nineteenth century, noting a transition from oral to written traditions,
development of generic conventions, and introduction of social distinctions
in audience targeting.
Given that the results of genre-specific study and cross-genre studies have
shown opposite directions of change in respect to the oral/written
continuum, it seems clear that this area needs much fuller study.
Moreover, the linguistic features defining “oral” and “written” texts need
to be understood better than they currently are before a diachronic study
of texts can come to any certain conclusions. One might also question
whether the focus on oral and written features, given the uncertainties
surrounding this topic, is the most useful one.
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