The Medieval Life of Language

Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe

Mark Amsler (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

264 Seiten

2021
Amsterdam University Press (Verlag)
978-94-6372-192-9 (ISBN)

Titel ist leider vergriffen;
keine Neuauflage

Artikel merken

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication is revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon’s sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer’s poetry, inquisitors’ accounts of heretic speech, and life-writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

Mark Amsler has taught medieval and comparative literature, linguistics, and writing at universities in the US and New Zealand. He is author of Etymology and Grammatical Discourse, Affective Literacies, and numerous essays on medieval literature, history of linguistics, English linguistics, and critical theory.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?

1 Medieval Pragmatics: Philosophical and Grammatical Contexts
Three Terms and a Theory
Roger Bacon’s Semiotics and Pragmatics
Peter (of) John Olivi: Pragmatics and the Will to Speak

2 Interjections: Does Affect have Grammar?

3 Allas Context
Allas: A Case for Context

4 Alisoun’s Giggle, or the Miller Does Pragmatics
Does a Giggle Mean?
Impoliteness, Hedging, and Textual Pragmatics
Polysemy, Bullseyes, Misfires, or How Narrative Escapes Intention
Centrifugal Narrative Contracts

5 How Heretics Talk, According to Bernard Gui and William Thorpe
Pragmatic Talk, Pragmatic Action
Bernard Gui’s Conversation Analysis and Institutional Discourse
William Thorpe’s Relationship Pragmatics

6 Margery Kempe’s Strategic Vague Language
Cooperate or Else
Vaguing Pragmatics
Kempe Comes to the Archbishop
Kempe Tells a Tale

One More Thing
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	24.06.2021
Reihe/Serie	Knowledge Communities
Zusatzinfo	5 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	Amsterdam
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Sprachphilosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
ISBN-10	94-6372-192-4 / 9463721924
ISBN-13	978-94-6372-192-9 / 9789463721929
Zustand	Neuware