Dimensione pra(gma)tica e comunità di discorso?
Il caso di alcune lettere mercantili redatte in catalano cinquecentesco
Abstract
The paper investigates some properties of a set of letters written in Catalan by two merchants between the 15th and 16th centuries. The focus is on the role of a type of writing tradition within the broader context of analysis framed by the construct of community of practice and, more specifically, community of discourse, with specific reference to some properties that can be observed in the letters under examination. These letters show a pragmatic dimension, according to principles of economy and flexibility that associate the language of the examined letters (written mode) with the demands and structural characteristics more typical of the spoken mode, such as the reformulation of meaning, syntactic juxtaposition and parenthesis, the function of contextualisation through meta-discourse, and so forth. The text is produced for a practical and pragmatic function strictly related to commercial transactions. In turn, this is expressed through a type of writing system that we could define as pragmatic, which can be captured in its processual dimension. As a matter of fact, it is possible to identify some clues that indicate the process of constructing a text in progress. Therefore, the pragmatic dimension (strictly speaking) can be interpreted considering the construction of certain written products captured in their own elaboration, thus tracing the writer’s imprint attached to the text (see properties such as flexibility, dialogic dimension, and immediacy). The text is not only a product but also a trace of the practical writing activity that leads to it. In this paper, this parameter that regards the norms of production of the letters is mainly associated with the emergence of a community of discourse.
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