Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics

Foreign language learning manuals can be valuable sources for the history of pragmatics and historical pragmatics. They may contain explicit guidance on pragmatics not found in native-speaker grammars: for example, accounts of German forms of address in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English-Ger...

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Main Author: McLelland, Nicola
Format: Article
Published: John Benjamins 2018
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Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49590/
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author McLelland, Nicola
author_facet McLelland, Nicola
author_sort McLelland, Nicola
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Foreign language learning manuals can be valuable sources for the history of pragmatics and historical pragmatics. They may contain explicit guidance on pragmatics not found in native-speaker grammars: for example, accounts of German forms of address in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English-German manuals provide evidence of changing views on the appropriateness of ihr and Sie earlier than does the “native” grammatical tradition. The bilingual model dialogues typical of such manuals may also implicitly model appropriate linguistic behaviour, demonstrated here by examining the communicative genre of bargaining in a series of three related English-Dutch language manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, the dialogues may provide metalinguistic comment on linguistic behaviour, for example criticizing the culture of excessive negative politeness. Such sources can enrich our knowledge of language use and attitudes to language use in the area of politeness, complementing the evidence to be gleaned from mainstream native grammars, civility manuals, merchants’ guides, and the like.
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spelling nottingham-495902020-05-04T17:56:33Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49590/ Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics McLelland, Nicola Foreign language learning manuals can be valuable sources for the history of pragmatics and historical pragmatics. They may contain explicit guidance on pragmatics not found in native-speaker grammars: for example, accounts of German forms of address in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English-German manuals provide evidence of changing views on the appropriateness of ihr and Sie earlier than does the “native” grammatical tradition. The bilingual model dialogues typical of such manuals may also implicitly model appropriate linguistic behaviour, demonstrated here by examining the communicative genre of bargaining in a series of three related English-Dutch language manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, the dialogues may provide metalinguistic comment on linguistic behaviour, for example criticizing the culture of excessive negative politeness. Such sources can enrich our knowledge of language use and attitudes to language use in the area of politeness, complementing the evidence to be gleaned from mainstream native grammars, civility manuals, merchants’ guides, and the like. John Benjamins 2018-08-10 Article PeerReviewed McLelland, Nicola (2018) Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 19 (1). ISSN 1569-9854 Historical pragmatics; history of pragmatics; Dutch; German; language learning manuals; forms of address; politeness https://benjamins.com/catalog/jhp.00012.mcl doi:10.1075/jhp.00012.mcl doi:10.1075/jhp.00012.mcl
spellingShingle Historical pragmatics; history of pragmatics; Dutch; German; language learning manuals; forms of address; politeness
McLelland, Nicola
Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title_full Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title_fullStr Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title_full_unstemmed Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title_short Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
title_sort mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics
topic Historical pragmatics; history of pragmatics; Dutch; German; language learning manuals; forms of address; politeness
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49590/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49590/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49590/