Pragmatics: History

The aim of the paper is to critically reconstruct the beginnings of pragmatics, emphasizing the continuity of pragmatic ideas in the history of Western linguistic thought. Four main issues are addressed: (i) the reasons behind the choice of the term ‘pragmatics’ in the 1970s to name the “new” discipline and the historical evidence for the existence of two different traditions; (ii) the historiographical problem of five forgotten initiators (Wegener, Malinowski, Gardiner, Bühler, Firth); (iii) the philological comparison between Gardiners theory of speech acts of 1932 and Austin’s of 1955/ 1962; (iv) the criteria for reconstructing the history of pragmatics.
Key Points:
• The history of pragmatics is characterized by continuity over time rather than discontinuity.
• It is fully integrated into the broader history of linguistics, of which it is a part.
• The ‘initiators’ of what we now call pragmatics were not only philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, etc., but also
linguists and philologists, and with a far from marginal role.
• The 1920s and 1930s were the most fertile and decisive period for the beginnings of pragmatics as we now understand it.