Wilhelm, Raymund (2024): Le tradizioni discorsive. Dalle norme comunicative alla storia della lingua, Roma: Carocci, 327 pages. ISBN: 978-88-290-1710-2.
One of the most fruitfully applied concepts in Romance Linguistics and beyond over recent decades has been that of Discourse Traditions (DT)1, and Raymund Wilhelm is one of the authors who has contributed most to the empirical foundations and theoretical sharpening of the field. The current volume brings together, in Italian, nine papers previously published in various places and languages, and adds a new theoretical introduction and a chapter on textual traditions in the 16th century in Italy. Let me say at the outset that the collection constitutes one of the most interesting overall contributions to the study of textual traditions in Romance, especially in Italian and French, as well as to the discussion on the true nature of DT.
The book begins with some short, preliminary remarks, where the author cites the sources of the different contributions: studies that have arisen over the course of more than 25 years of research on discourse traditions and which include general theoretical papers (part 1) as well as very detailed empirical case studies (part 2).
The newly added introduction (chapter I) underlines the theoretical necessity of including the study of DT in historical linguistics. Wilhelm defines the differences between DT and other notions, such as style, norm and register, and indicates a number of related misunderstandings in the literature, such as when variational (diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic) phenomena, especially stylistic variation, are not clearly distinguished from DT. I wholly agree with the need to make a clear distinction between systemic aspects and textual traditions, and then to address the relationship between these two, which is not an easy task, in that all the relevant aspects exist (and merge) within the same empirical reality: the text2. The same holds for the
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general distinction between textual historicity and the historicity of language systems; Wilhelm casts doubts on the priority of the latter with regard to the former, and he is surely right in a genetic sense: discursive tradition is just a form of tradition, i.e. situationally anchored repetition, and tradition can be found beyond the world of humans, and indeed is prior to the existence of human language (see Hockett 1960 for an early discussion of this). But once human language makes its appearance in human evolution, all other semiotic systems become subordinated to it, including “tradition”.
Chapter 2 is an Italian translation of the theoretical introduction to Wilhelm’s 1996 book on Italian pamphlets from the 16th century. In contrast to the introduction, the references in this chapter (as well as those of others) are not updated, but nevertheless the chapter is still a valid introduction to the evolution of the linguistics of genres or text types in the 1970s and traces the path that leads from Coseriu’s theory of language and his observations on textual traditions (for example, in Coseriu 1994) to Brigitte Schlieben-Lange’s seminal Traditionen des Sprechens, a foundation of historical pragmatics published in 1983, and to Peter Koch’s 1987 habilitation thesis on the Italian Ars dictaminis, where the concept and indeed the term DT itself is presented and developed. The chapter postulates the autonomy (and, for certain studies, priority) of the study of textual tradition with regard to the history of a language, and at the same points out their mutual relationship. It introduces an important distinction between different kinds of features that serve for the study of textual traditions, and insists on the fact that these features can be formal ones (names of genres, declarations of intention, formulae and formal macro-structures) as well as features on the content side (see our own distinction between three formal and three content dimensions in Kabatek 2015).
Chapter 3 is a translation of a general chapter on DT, originally published in 2001 in German as part of a handbook on language typology and language universals (Wilhelm 2001). It introduces the concept of DT following Peter Koch, and shows the “degrees of complexity” of DT, from discourse universes (in Schlieben-Lange’s sense) to genres and finally to formulae. DT are considered to be historical objects, but the fact that any text pertains to DT is considered a universal fact. In the case of genres as DT of “middle complexity”, various terms are introduced in order to show the possible relationship between texts and genres: genre crossover, genre mixture, genre convergence and genre differentiation. The chapter outlines some general
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observations on DT and language history, discusses the relationship between DT and particular languages, and shows how DT are relevant for historical sociolinguistics.
Chapter 4 introduces the concept of “discursive community” and discusses in detail one of the general issues of the book: the relationship between language and DT, and specifically between linguistic communities and “discursive communities”, individuals who form a community by participating in the common production of texts corresponding to certain traditions, such as the scientific community (see also chapter 8). Hence, “Discursive communities” are dynamic yet individuals within them have multiple identities.
Chapter 5 is a plea for the reintroduction of a bridge between linguistics and literary studies through the study of textual tradition and by means of a focus on the importance of ecdotics for both. It considers traditionality to be the common pertinent concept for the two disciplines, even if they will then move on to specialise in different aspects. It signals, at the same time, the danger of a separation within linguistics: “historical” linguistics on the one hand, with its interest in textual traditions, and synchronic linguistics on the other, inclined as it is to consider general linguistics and language universals rather than historical facts.
It may be necessary here to underline the fact that the notion of DT is by no means one that applies solely to historical facts in the sense of facts from the past. If the general claim that there is no utterance outside tradition is true, then the notion of DT is also a crucial one for any synchronic study. In this sense, the old dictum defended by Hermann Paul that there is nothing but historical linguistics is true: every utterance is part of textual and idiomatic tradition, and only fictitious “universal structures”, if indeed they exist, might truly be ahistoric.
However, since the author of this book is a historical linguist, it will come as no surprise that the second part of the volume, “Sondaggi storici” (‘historical studies’, chapters 6-11), focuses precisely on historical examples for the relevance of the concept of DT.
Thus, Chapter 6 explores the early translations of Boccaccio’s Decameron into French (with some side-references to Thomas Mann and translations of Die Buddenbrooks). It is shown that there is a significant relationship between DT and translation: since literary traditions are different in different communities, translators have two well-known options at their disposal: to adopt elements from the source language or to adapt the content of the source text to the traditions of the target community. And what is common knowledge in translation studies regarding linguistic means is also valid for DT. The chapter also offers an interesting study of the diffusion of the word novella across the languages of Europe (and thus the name of a genre as a DT).
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Chapter 7 is dedicated to formulae as DT. Formulae are clearly a type of DT, as we have argued in several publications in discussions of three formal types of DT (formulae, forms and zones) and three content types (domains, themes and motives, see Kabatek 2015, 62). Referring to the Italian medievalist Cesare Segre, the chapter introduces the important distinction between intertextuality and interdiscursivity, claiming that formulae pertain to the latter and that only these are real DT: the mere repetition of an individual text (for example, the repetition of a literary citation such as “en un lugar de la Mancha”, alluding to the opening of the Quixote) is not a DT but rather an instance of intertextuality. A repetition of a literary text may become a DT if it is associated with a particular situationality and acquires an independent value as a sign. Wilhelm not only discusses the different types of repetition (intratextual repetition, as in the case of a Leitmotiv , intertextual repetition, interdiscursive repetition and repetition of any grammatical – and we might add, lexical – item), he also offers a widely documented exemplification of medieval formulae related to the Vita di Santa Maria egiziaca, identifying a web of medieval formulae that have a crosslinguistic existence (with variation) within Romance, including more locally used items that display their particular regionality and invite a study of the diachronic evolution of their linguistic geography within the various areas of Romance.
Chapter 8 returns to the emergence of scientific prose in Romance languages in the 13th century, concentrating on a number of French and Italian works by Brunetto Latini and Jean d’Antioche (a reference to Spanish here might have been interesting, see, for example, Holloway 1985). The chapter shows the emergence of scientific texts in the vernacular with their central sub-texts, such as that of the scientific definition, and discusses the relationship between a general “scientific community” and its expression in different languages, as well as the somehow problematic relationship between scientific textual traditions and idiomatic diaphasic varieties. Science is presented here as an evolving historical “discourse universe” (recall that in his late period Coseriu defines discourse universes semiotically, and the “evolution” would in his terms be that of what we called “discursive domains” within a stable universe, where the aim is to describe the object objectively, see Coseriu 2002).
Chapter 9, at first glance, seems to go beyond the study of DT, in that it is dedicated to a single individual text. However, it shows how discursive traditionality is a factor to be taken into account when analysing individual texts3. In the different versions of the Vita di
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sant’Alessio, a 15th century text known through several manuscripts, the textual tradition seems to be imposing itself, in some of the analysed cases, over its prevailing grammatical realities. Another example is the Vita di San Rocco , a text from 1490, with only one case of proclitic placement and 25 cases of enclisis, a nice example to illustrate how a single item may say more than all the others (and that shows how qualitative interpretations must be added to pure quantitative item-counting): the sole instance of proclisis here illustrates the vernacular grammar of the time, whereas all the other examples are but instances of “archaic” usage due to the tradition in which the text is situated (p. 228).
Chapter 10 is a wonderful essay on DT and language contact, originally published in German in 2006. It shows how, with the emerging traditions of journalistic texts in the 18th century, the need to create techniques of distance increases, and how authors use the conditional form in French journalistic texts in order to show that they are reporting facts to which they themselves have not testified. This kind of evidenciality marking (in French: “conditionnel de la rumeur”) is then adopted as “condizionale di dissociazione” by Italian journalists in the early traditions of the Italian press, mainly in the Gazetta di Milano. The chapter convincingly traces the evolutionary lines of this and other verbal forms, and shows how an internationally emerging body of textual traditions serves as a place where contact happens and where grammatical Gallicisms (these completely in line with the systemic possibilities of the Italian verbal system) enter into the Italian system.
Finally, chapter 11, a yet unpublished text, offers some reflections on Italian pamphlets of the 16th century, based on Wilhelm’s monumental 1996 book on the same topic, published in German (see Wilhelm 1996). This textual genre (Wilhelm uses here, in contrast to what is stated in chapter 1, “textual genre or discourse tradition” as synonymous, p. 289) came into existence after the invention of printing and is studied here, based on a large number of examples, in terms of its relationship to other genres at the moment of its emergence and in light of its traditionality of form and content (the latter related to a wide range of concepts, from particular discursive motives to the entire tradition of “factual” descriptions). It is shown how a new textual tradition is constructed based on the experience of previously existing ones, and thus how innovation and tradition are two sides of the same evolutionary coin. The text also shows how certain combinations of languages or varieties may become characteristics of a particular textual tradition, and how languages and varieties on the one hand, and discourse traditions on the other, must be separated yet at the same time can be related.
The book ends with a comprehensive list of references. It should be noted that there seem to be different regional sub-traditions in the study of DT, and that Wilhelm concentrates here
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on the German and Italian traditions, whereas other authors have focused on the Spanish tradition (see, for example, Kabatek 2018). It would be interesting to merge these two strands of tradition and also to make this book accessible to a wider audience by means of translation (such as into Spanish, English or French, or indeed into all of these). Even if the author – with good reasons – insists, against the overall tendency of monolingualisation, on the importance of linguistic plurality, not least in the case scholarly texts (p. 216), the universality of his contribution and the important theoretical issues raised in this volume – in combination with its rich empirical foundations – well merit a wider dissemination to, and discussion by, a readership free from the limitations of language boundaries.
On p. 30f., the author criticises a certain dilettantism that can be found in several works referring to the notion of discourse traditions. There are authors who simply apply the concept in an impressionistic sense, without taking into account the overall theoretical conception which underlies it. In light of this, he postulates the creation of a “real and proper science of discourse traditions" (p. 31). The present book is indeed one of the most advanced contributions to such a science to have been published thus far.
References
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Coseriu, Eugenio (2002): «Orationis fundamenta. La preghiera come testo», in: Giuseppe De Gennaro (ed.), I Quattro Universi di Discorso. Atti del Congresso Internazionale «Orationis Millennium» (L’Aquila, 24-30/06/2000), Citá del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 24-47.
Hockett, Charles F. (1960): “The origin of speech”, Scientific American 203, 3, 88-96.
Holloway, Julia Bolton, “Alfonso el Sabio, Brunetto Latini, and Dante Alighieri”, Thought 60/239 (1985), 468-483.
Kabatek, Johannes (2015): “Wie kann man Diskurstraditionen kategorisieren?”, in: Winter- Froemel, Esme / López Serena, Araceli / Octavio de Toledo, Álvaro / Frank-Job, Barbara: Diskurstraditionelles und Einzelsprachliches im Sprachwandel/ Tradicionalidad discursiva e idiomaticidad en los procesos de cambio lingüístico, Tübingen: Narr, 51-65.
Kabatek, Johannes (2018): Lingüística coseriana, lingüística histórica, tradiciones discursivas, ed. by Cristina Bleorțu and David Gerards, Madrid: Vervuert – Iberoamericana.
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Kabatek, Johannes (2021): “Eugenio Coseriu on immediacy, distance and discourse traditions”, in: Munteanu, Cristinel / Willems, Klaas, Eugenio Coseriu: Past, Present and Future, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter 2021, 227-243. DOI 10.1515/9783110712391-014
Kabatek, Johannes (2023): “Discourse Traditions and the historicity of language: discourse traditional knowledge and discourse universes”, in: Esme Winter-Froemel/Álvaro Octavio de Toledo y Huerta (eds.), Manual of Discourse Traditions in Romance, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter 2023, 103-122. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110668636-005.
Koch, Peter (1987): Distanz im Dictamen. Zur Schriftlichkeit und Pragmatik mittelalterlicher Brief- und Redemodelle in Italien, Freiburg im Breisgau: University of Freiburg (unpublished habilitation thesis).
Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte (1983): Traditionen des Sprechens. Elemente einer pragmatischen Sprachgeschichtsschreibung, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Wilhelm, Raymund (1996): Italienische Flugschriften des Cinquecento (1500-1550). Gattungsgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte, Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Wilhelm, Raymund (2001): “Diskurstraditionen”, in Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook, I, 467–477. Berlin/New York, de Gruyter.
Winter-Froemel, Esme / Octavio de Toledo y Huerta, Álvaro (eds.) (2023): Manual of Discourse Traditions in Romance, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 103-122.
Johannes Kabatek, Universität Zürich
kabatek@rom.uzh.ch
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2 A personal footnote: In the newly added chapter 1, Wilhelm defends his interpretation of the concept of DT against other proposals found in the literature over recent decades; some of his criticism here seem appropriate, whereas in other cases there appear to be misunderstandings. In the case of his criticisms of my personal conception of DT (which is, essentially, an explicit inclusion of the notion within the theoretical framework proposed by Coseriu), the various points cannot be addressed here in detail, but I believe that most of them are based on certain misinterpretations (perhaps due to unclear formulations on my part). Specifically: a) I do not believe, as stated on p. 28, that Humboldt is referring to the universal side of language when he says that language cannot be taught but must rather be awakened within an individual’s mind. Neither do I believe that this notion can be appropriated by a Chomskyan view, in the sense that it would refer to existing innate structures. Rather, I believe that Humboldt, for whom the particular language is the only empirically existing form of human language, is referring here to the individual energeia that must be activated within the mind of the individual: it is not a copy of erga but an activation of a productive activity (even if LL-models achieve almost perfect results, human language is more than just copy-pasting); b) there is no such thing as a historicity of the universal level (at least not in times of existence of a homo sapiens that speaks); c) I have never claimed (against what Wilhelm seems to have understood) that after acquisition and “possession” of a language by an individual, the language can no longer change; indeed, the very opposite is the case: language is always changing and dynamic; d) Wilhelm claims that I am referring only to first language acquisition. This is by no means the case: whereas second language acquisition is different in various ways, it always includes acquisition of systemic as well as traditional aspects, otherwise it would be incomplete.
Copyright (c) 2025 Johannes Kabatek
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