On Speech and Discourse Communities in the Viking Age1 Piotr P. Chruszczewski University of Wrocław, Poland ABSTRACT: While contemplating reality and its nature, one is struck by the high occurrence of patterns by means of which the surrounding reality is built. Moreover, we – as human beings – respond to the surrounding reality in our patterned behavior. There is a pattern to be found in almost all (if not in all) the ways we communicate. It is humans who take advantage of their biological predisposition for neuro-cognitive development. One of the highest stages of this development is the ability for abstract thinking which helps people find proper socializing patterns. One can also observe that societies define themselves through their communication. Moreover, it is also communication which serves as a major instrument of the social construction of reality. Speech and discourse communities are the units on the basis of which one can research the socializing patterns and processes of human beings across the ages, including even the societies which no longer exist—like the Viking Age societies. A speech community it is understood in this work as a group of people frequently interacting with one another, sharing the same systems of signs (and sharing the same externalized meanings), and being different from other groups in their patterns of language use. KEYWORDS: Germanic languages, Viking Age Scandinavia, speech and discourse communities, socializing patterns, ethnicity 1. On Speech and Discourse in the Viking Age It seems obvious that when a group of people lives together for an extended period of time, members of the group produce quite a number of verbal and nonverbal behaviors which are, to a great extent, specific only to these particular group members. Members of the group in question can go as far in the production of verbal behaviors as the production of totally new meanings which can be fully transparent only to them. Seana Coulson calls such new meanings “semantic leaps,” adding that “[m]any leaps are necessary 1 The work is based on previously published materials in Chruszczewski (2006: 51–57; 69–75). Cf. also Chruszczewski (2009).
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