Interpreting literalised rituals as a genre

Abstract The aim of this article is to systematically describe the genre of literalised rituals from a historical pragmatic perspective. The study is based on a corpus drawn from the archaic Chinese source Shijing 詩經 (‘ The Book of Odes ’), which is a renowned collection of poetic texts written between the eleventh and sixth centuries bc . We examine a particular section of Shijing as an example par excellence for the genre of literalised rituals. Characteristics of ritual language use in our corpus are captured through the units of expressions, speech acts and speech act sequences, which are shown to gain a specific ritual load in ritualised poetry. This study not only fills a knowledge gap by providing a pragmatic investigation of the understudied Confucian Classic of Shijing but outlines the key features of literalised ritual as a genre. This investigation of Shijing also contributes to the study of ancient texts, an area which has gained momentum in historical pragmatics.