As already shown, apart from Leech’s (1983) and Thomas’s (1983) contrast and distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, these terms have been variously construed in the relevant literature and, used independently of each other, they have emphasised the social conditions in which utterances are produced and understood as verbal contributions in acts of communication. Regardless of whether the pragmalinguistics/sociopragmatics distinction is theoretically justi- fied, analytically possible, or ideologically desirable, it has motivated the corre- sponding methodological distinction in L2 acquisition research and L2 teaching and testing in particular. The concepts of pragmatic failure, pragmatic transfer and pragmatic development, relevant in these fields of research, explicitly make refer- ence to this distinction. The research questions in the pragmatics of L2 teaching and testing have to do with defining L2 learners’ verbal approximations to L2 as detected in their performance and then attributing them to pragmalinguistic or so- ciopragmatic sources. The focus is on whether L2 learners’ utterances are appro- priate communicative contributions in the social context in which they occur and whether their inferencing is based on an understanding of social context. Appro- priateness is an essentially evaluative term (see Fetzer 2004; 2007). In the frame- work of L2 acquisition research it refers to the learners’ speech actions, which are constantly assessed as being in accordance with the linguistic norms and context- ual constraints and requirements of particular communicative acts in the target lan- guage and culture. The appropriateness of L2 learners’ performance is not always easy to evaluate on the basis of the pragmalinguistics/sociopragmatics distinction. More specifically, the absence of sharp boundaries between these two concepts weakens their methodological usefulness in diagnosing the source of pragmatic failure, pragmatic transfer, or the stage of L2 learners’ pragmatic development, es- pecially in the context of L2 testing, as already mentioned. It seems easier to main- tain the pragmalinguistics/sociopragmatics distinction in the context of L2 teach- ing, in the sense that the methodology adopted, the materials used, and the tasks in which learners are engaged can be designed so as to focus on this distinction and raise the L2 learners’ awareness of the linguistic and social issues involved in their use of L2.
In the area of historical pragmatics and historical corpus linguistics the situ- ation is different. The texts examined belong either to the same period (as in syn- chronic studies) or to different periods (as in diachronic studies).8 Pragmalinguistic
diachronic studies proceed from form to function, whereas sociopragmatic dia- chronic studies follow the function-to-form process. Historical sociopragmatics focuses on the interaction of context and language use either synchronically or diachronically. In the context of historical pragmatics and historical corpus lin- guistics the distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics can be fruitfully maintained in spite of the lack of sharp boundaries between the two. His-
torical texts are viewed as definitive and complete instantiations of a complex con- figuration of parameters, such as coparticipants and their social, interactional and discursive roles, communicative action, genre, and cultural norms and strategies of a speech community. Unlike historical pragmatics research, L2 acquisition re- search is based on texts as approximations of the target language, which makes it extremely difficult to diagnose just which specific parameter is at issue in evaluat- ing appropriateness.
On the basis of the above, it is fair to say that, even though the pragmaling- uistics/sociopragmatics distinction was initially launched as a level of cross-lin- guistic application of the general pragmatic principles of cooperation and polite- ness (as in Leech 1983), and even though it was systematically taken up in the context of L2 acquisition research, it seems to have been more relevant in the area of historical pragmatics and historical corpus linguistics as a reliable methodologi- cal tool in the investigation of the pragmatics of historical texts. Needless to say, further theoretical justification of the concepts of pragmalinguistics and socioprag- matics, and of the distinction between them, ultimately depends on future research in pragmatics and related areas of linguistic enquiry.
Notes
1. It is interesting to note here that Olsen’s views remind one of Wittgenstein’s (1958) posi- tion that linguistic meaning resides in language use and Wierzbicka’s (1992) introduction of a Natural Semantic Metalanguage to deal with the cultural relativity of word-meaning pairings across languages. Evidently, the dependence of linguistic meaning on use in par- ticular socio-cultural settings is a recurring theme in linguistic theory.
2. In fact, interlanguage, as an interim system of L2 learners, has some features of the L1 and some of the L2, but also features that are independent of their L1 and L2 (see Yule 2006: 167).
3. This is compatible with the view that sociopragmatic awareness is likely to improve prag- malinguistic performance.
4. See also Jucker A. H. and I. Taavitsainen (eds.) 2010. Historical Pragmatics, Vol. 8 of the series Handbooks of Pragmatics (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter).
5. Within the narrow, Anglo-American tradition to pragmatics, Traugott (2004: 538) defines historical pragmatics as a usage-based, pragmatically motivated, approach to language change.
6. Critical discourse analysis is “fundamentally concerned with analysing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language” (Wodak 2001: 2).
7. These two text types offer interactive, face-to-face, speech-related data that only approxi- mate authentic discourse. Drama consists of imaginary constructed dialogue and trial proceedings constitute the record of a prior speech event.
8. Relevant to this point is the distinction between diachronic pragmatics and pragmaphil- ology (Jacobs and Jucker 1995) and diachronic sociopragmatics and sociophilology (Archer and Culpeper 2009).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the three reviewers for their helpful suggestions and com- ments. I am also grateful to Jonathan Culpeper, Marcelo Dascal, Andreas Jucker, and Carsten Roever for making their work available to me. This paper has bene- fited from very useful stylistic suggestions made by Eleni Antonopoulou, to whom I am greatly indebted.
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