I investigate directive speech acts in four classical Sanskrit texts, two dramas (Abhijnan asakuntalam and Mrcchakatika) and two narratives (Nala and Dasakumaracaritam)
This dissertation demonstrates the value of approaching classical languages from a pragmatic perspective. As for its narrow scope goals, this study provides a summary and a tentative gradation of the (in)directness strategies available to the characters in my corpora to express a directive, a sketch of their communicative styles, a proposal to deal with the distribution of forms in a more or less consistent manner, and an outline of the Indian concept of and approach to deference and politeness in general
This dissertation also shows the value of analysing classical texts for the advancement of current pragmatic theories. The discussion elaborates on several occasions on the too rigid theory propounded by Brown and Levinson (1987) to account for the selection of strategies. It is pointed out first, that it is beneficial to substitute the notion of deference for the notion of politeness and to define politeness as appropriateness, a concept which adequately captures context inspired flexibility; second, that the correlation between indirectness and deference is neither mono-dimensional nor unconditional; third, that positive and negative politeness cannot be seen as consecutive links in a chain; fourth, that a lump sum of parameters cannot account for the selection of strategies; fifth, that affect is not a direct component of D (social distance); and sixth, that D cannot be a symmetrical relation. Furthermore, this study gives rise to a renewed discussion of the alleged 'discrete' and 'universal' character of the three parameters P (power), D (social distance) and R (ranking of impositions)
Finally, this dissertation points out that classical languages in which different historical periods are well documented offer rich opportunities to study pragmatic change. It is suggested that the more a language stagnates, the more remote the familiarity with the finesses of the language, the higher the likelihood of a reanalysis of 'indirectness'. Relative syntactic and semantic stability does not guarantee pragmatic stability. Pragmatics is extremely sensitive to ongoing (r)evolutions in and susceptible to interferences from the vernaculars. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
