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Responsibility in discourse: Evidence, report and entitlement to speak in the Book of deeds of King James

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2006

JOAN A. ARGENTER
JOAN A. ARGENTER
Affiliation:
General Linguistics, Edifici B, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Cerdanyola, Spain, joan.argenter@uab.es
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Abstract

An ethnographic approach to language aims at explaining the organization of a verbal culture, understood as the result of speakers' practices and agency. The instrument of this research is fieldwork. For the verbal cultures of bygone societies, only examination of written records helps us to guess how speaking worked at the time. This general issue is addressed by scrutinizing a medieval Catalan chronicle. Ethnographic and pragmatic concepts are projected backward on data informative on face-to-face communication and the interactional construction of a social order. Speakers' rights and obligations, their metalinguistic and metapragmatic management of verbal resources (genres, texts, codeswitching), and the link between linguistic management and ideologies are uncovered. The article focuses on the relationship among evidence, knowledge and reporting of events, and the production and reproduction of authority in Catalan medieval society, as well as the different types of responsibility in discourse and their patterns of social distribution. Concentration is on three types of discourse events: delegated discourse, mediated communication, and a specific type of codeswitching in political oratory, quotation cum auctoritate.The research on which this article is based was funded by the Department of Research, Universities and Information Society, Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, Research Fund BFF2003-02954. I benefited from a visiting scholar stay at the University of California, Berkeley (spring–summer 2003). I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers who helped to imprive this article. Particular thanks go to Jane McGary, who patiently helped in editing the manuscript and making it a more readable text.

Keywords

agency and discoursepower and authorityhistorical ethnopragmaticsverbal culturecodes and code-switchingCatalan
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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