The Medieval Life of Language

Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe

Mark Amsler

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English

Routledge
01 December 2025

Grammar, syntax; Medieval history

Series: Knowledge Communities

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication is revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon’s sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer’s poetry, inquisitors’ accounts of heretic speech, and life-writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

By: Mark Amsler
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781041188490
ISBN 10: 1041188498
Series: Knowledge Communities
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 01 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Mark Amsler has taught medieval and comparative literature, linguistics, and writing at universities in the US and New Zealand. He is author of Etymology and Grammatical Discourse, Affective Literacies, and numerous essays on medieval literature, history of linguistics, English linguistics, and critical theory.

Reviews for The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe

[...] Amsler's book offers a persuasive demonstration not only of the existence of a medieval pragmatics avant la lettre but also of the fresh analyses of familiar medieval texts that the terminology of modern pragmatics can facilitate.,- Rory G. Critten, Anglia, Vol. 140, Iss. 3-4, [...] an interesting collection of case-studies under an over-arching thematic framework of Bakhtinian dialogism and pragmatics. [...] this is a hugely stimulating volume and I found myself constantly thinking of examples from within my own field which would benefit from these types of analysis.,- Paul Russell, Language & History, Vol. 65, Iss. 2, the book's overall achievement... is to develop out of a winningly clear and detailed analysis of medieval linguistic thought a well-stocked toolkit for prising out the pragmatic thinking (Amsler's apt phrase) embedded in literature, testimony, and life-writing, Christopher Cannon, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, volume 98, number 2