A historical but non-determinist pragmatics of literary communication

Abstract

Despite any appearances to the contrary, literary writing and reading are forms of communicative activity for which a human parity needs to obtain between the different participants. By the same token, literature can also bring about changes in the human world. Literary pragmatics is therefore continuous with the pragmatics of communication in general, and must be strongly historical in its orientation, even if this can never involve a rigid historical determinism. Although human identity is very much a matter of social formation, human beings do have a certain autonomy of imagination, intellect, temperament and choice. It is this relative autonomy which makes possible communication between different positionalities in the first place, and which also helps to explain the processes of personal and social change. When people really communicate, they meet each other half-way. Initiators of communication textualise a model of the communicative situation itself, for instance, and also make rhetorical concessions, which, as the mental distance between the context of sending and the context of receiving varies, can themselves vary in communicative effect. In responding to a communicative gesture, similarly, receivers are humanly obliged to make a hermeneutic effort, which, especially, but not only in the case of literary communication, may have to negotiate variations in text typology and politeness. The net effect of literature, like that of other uses of language, depends on who is processing it, and when and where and how. In principle, the effect can sometimes be deleterious. As always, human beings’ only moral defence lies in their own personal powers of judgement. Equally, some literary writings, like other actions, embody a kind of ethical beauty, not only as significant historical interventions in their own times and places, but also in terms of a continuing, yet quite distinct inspiration they can offer to human beings whose situationality is different. All genuine communication actually tends to override situational difference in the hope of closer communion. A historical pragmatics can itself facilitate rapprochement, by offering a theoretical basis for mediation between different viewpoints, and not least in the form of a mediating literary criticism. Here, though, there can be no suggestion of hegemony. Sociohistorical differences will never completely disappear. Nor will human behaviour ever become completely explicable. If it did, it would no longer be human in the sense understood by a non-determinist pragmatics.

2. Participation structure in fictional discourse: Authors, scriptwriters, audiences and characters

“…Most relevant for this discussion of literary participation is the work of Sell (1991Sell ( , 2000Sell ( , 2001Sell ( , 2014 and the Literary Communication Project of Åbo Akademi University. Sell (2014: 3) programmatically states that he and the LitCom group regard "writing, reading and performance of so-called literary texts as acts of real communication between real human beings as they engage in what is fundamentally a kind of dialogue". More specifically, Sell positions himself between the structuralist view of literary texts as products of their socio-cultural context and a subjectivist notion of authors and readers as idiosyncratic individuals.…”

“…More specifically, Sell positions himself between the structuralist view of literary texts as products of their socio-cultural context and a subjectivist notion of authors and readers as idiosyncratic individuals. He sees human beings as social individuals that possess both their own imagination, but are also influenced by historical factors (Sell 2000(Sell , 2014. This understanding of authors and readers is also expressed in his theory of a historical yet non-historicist literary pragmatics (Sell 2000), which also highlights the necessity of a mediating critic that bridges the gap between the socio-historical context of the author and that of the reader.…”

Historical Pragmatics

“…They are produced by authors with specific intentions for a specific audience, and in this context they warrant a pragmatic analysis. Sell (2000, 2001), for instance, analyzes literature as communicative acts of real authors to real readers.…”

Politeness in eighteenth-century drama: a discursive approach

“…Literary texts can be seen as communicative acts between real authors and real readers even if the text is read by readers who live centuries after the author and even if the author could not possibly have had a clear image of his or her potential audience or even of the fact that his or her texts would still be read long after his or her death (see Sell 1991Sell , 2000Sell , 2001. Literary writing and reading are viewed as uses of language which amount to interpersonal activity, and which are thereby capable of bringing about a change in the status quo.…”

“…On a very immediate level they constitute a communicative act between a (real) author and the actual readers of his or her text, even if the act of writing and the act of reading may lie centuries apart and even if the author cannot possibly have had any clear idea of who would read his or her text in the centuries to come. Roger Sell in a series of publications has focused on this level in his investigation of the politeness (not in but) of literary texts (e.g., Sell 1991Sell , 2000Sell , 2001.…”