Dynamics of Pragmaticalization of the German Pragmateme prost Mahlzeit! in Expressive Speech Acts

The article aims to study and provide a comprehensive description of the relationship between the systemically determined meaning of the German pragmateme prost Mahlzeit! and the context of its use. This is done to identify the dynamics of pragmaticalization processes and to uncover latent meanings within a strictly limited corpus of German language material, following the research framework of pragma-semantics of linguistic units. The result of the analysis of 100 contextual examples of German pragmateme prost Mahlzeit! and its variants Na prost Mahlzeit, Na, dann prost Mahlzeit («To your health!»), a German etiquette formula that is also used with five meanings as a pragmatic marker expressing surprise, annoyance, disappointment, skepticism and irony. The scientific novelty of the research lies in examining the development of the meaning of the German formula as a result of semantic and pragmatic modification. Proved for the first time that the pragmateme is a rare example of a two-stage pragmaticalization of co-ocurring components, as a result of losing their lexical meaning. It is established that through the development of pragmatic meanings in dynamics, the situational denotation changes and is explicated into a wider range of communicative situations: from speech acts with the meaning of wishes to illocutionary expressions, from intention to exclamation with the meaning of spontaneity. The study demonstrates that during the dynamic shift from speech acts to expressive acts, positively connoted etiquette formulas become colloquial markers of the expression of negative emotions or sarcasm. It is revealed that the expressive function of a pragmateme is generated by its formality, stability and reproducibility. A multi-faceted approach — namely contextual analysis, pragmalinguistic analysis, corpus analysis methods, speech act theory, and the principles of construction grammar as applied to the pragmateme — is employed to uncover the dynamics of the investigated two-phase pragmaticalization of the formulaic pragmateme. As a result, using previously unstudied material, a foundation is laid for the subsequent development of a pragma-semantic typology of German pragmatemes.