8 - Manuscript Genealogy and the Diachrony of Pragmatic Usage in Icelandic Sagas

Summary

If pragmatics is the study of language usage within specific cultural and speech-situational contexts, then it is reasonable to expect that, as cultural contexts change over time, so the application of pragmatic principles within that changing context may also change. While it may safely be said that all language communities employ pragmatic principles, it does not follow that all communities employ the same principles in the same way. Some language communities may be more prone to indirectness while others place a higher value on directness in speech; strategies of (im)politeness may develop over time due to cultural changes in religion, ethics, or education; and the introduction of new technologies may alter the usage of certain pragmatic principles. This chapter explores how language use in contexts has developed over time in Iceland from the medieval to the post-medieval period by comparing manuscript traditions for four of the verbal exchanges discussed earlier in this volume: one each from Sneglu-Halla þáttr and Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu that exhibit characteristics of the conflictive principle, and two scenes from Gísla saga Súrssonar that show indications of indirect aggression.

The manuscript traditions of these sagas have a great deal to offer a discussion of the development of pragmatics in Iceland due to the number of witnesses for each saga and the chronological distributions of manuscripts from the medieval to the post-medieval period. These manuscripts can be used to create a timeline of sorts to indicate how principles of pragmatics were used and understood from the earlier medieval period to the later, post-medieval period. Successful consideration of these materials requires the adoption of several important assumptions about manuscripts from the field of material philology. Material philology is grounded, foremost, in the assumption that edited versions of ancient or medieval texts do not give a complete picture of the narrative as it existed in the living tradition. As Judy Quinn and others have pointed out, traditional editorial approaches such as those associated with Karl Lachman tend to attempt to construct an edited text that best represents the supposed original intent of the author.