At the start of this book I described pragmatics as an approach to language from the point of view of users and practice. That starting point shapes this critical history of medieval pragmatics theory, ideas, and metapragmatic awareness. Investigating medieval linguistics, philosophy of language, and narrative representations of speech interaction demonstrates the concrete workings of that definition of pragmatics in intellectual and imaginative discourse. But can we say that the historicity of medieval pragmatic ideas and metapragmatic awareness are epiphenomena attached to some essential core? ‘Pragmatics is pragmatics,’ right?

Not exactly. Contemporary pragmatics is a broad interdisciplinary field comprising linguistics, philosophy of language, cognitive studies, and more. Pragmatic theory and analysis and the disciplinary definitions and strategies which structure them are motivated and shaped by the alliances and antagonisms in broader contexts of language, knowledge, and social interaction. Paradigm theory (Kuhn), archaeology and genealogy analysis (Foucault), and historical ontology (Hacking) suggest how an intellectual discourse such as pragmatics or linguistics is a networked practice that establishes and reestablishes its questions, terms, and evidence so as to assert or maintain legitimacy and authority. A discourse is historically situated. It emerges and can be displaced or superseded by another or maintained as the way things are. A dominant hegemony is always under construction and maintainence, however powerful or given. Hegemony is always dynamic and therefore changeable. Alternate hegemonies are possible. Dialogism holds the possibility that things can be otherwise.

Contra Kuhn's theory of a dominant “paradigm,” a discourse such as linguistics or pragmatics often constructs more than one theoretical model at a time. Medieval linguistics manifests a multiplicity of models which interrelate around the question ‘What is grammatica?’