In Chapter 9, we look at how the pragmatician can capture the interactional dynamics of seemingly confusing cases of aggression in mediated political settings. In mediated scenes of politics, conflict may evolve in a seemingly ad hoc way, and in order to be able to analyse such settings it is necessary to linguistically analyse exactly what is happening in them. As a case study, we present a corpus of heckling incidents, including cases such as when the previous US first lady Michelle Obama was heckled in public. We argue that while heckling appears as a ‘disorderly’ incident, manifestations of heckling can be systematically categorised into major types, which impose different ritual frames on the public speaker being heckled. Following this view, our analysis shows that heckling is a standard situation in which the participants actually follow conventional forms of behaviour.

In Chapter 3 we discuss the pitfall of following an ethnocentric view in the study of politically relevant data. We argue that it is not fruitful either to associate a particular positive or negative value with a particular country or area, or to attribute a political notion or an actor with a positive or negative value. Here we critically consider the universal validity of notions such as ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘nationalism’, which may appear at first as clearly positive or negative and as such non-controversial from a Western viewpoint. We will refer to cases in which members of non-Western linguacultures conventionally interpret these notions differently from how they are conventionally seen in the West and how they are often used in academic inquiries in a seemingly ‘neutral’ way. We argue that it is ethnocentric to dismiss linguaculturally embedded standard interpretations of such notions as ‘undemocratic’, ‘unenlightened’ and ‘autocratic’ because through such a dismissive attitude one is led to automatically associating a particular positive or negative value with a particular country or area.

Early medieval charms invoke the service of the Visitation of the Sick through the use of liturgical elements central to that rite, as Chapter 4 argues. Charms import the singing of psalms, sprinkling of holy water, praying of anointing and healing formulas, imposing of hands, anointing of the body, and the chanting of antiphons and litanies. Once present in charms, these and other sacred practices serve as indices of the Visitation of the Sick. When allusions to the Visitatio Infirmorum are successfully recognized or evoked, charms invoke the liturgy. Because recognition proves crucial, the question of charm participants’ familiarity with the Visitation of the Sick leads us to assess the resonance of Visitatio references through the construct of a continuum. At one end we find charms containing references to the Visitation of the Sick that seem subtle in light of their brevity or context. At the opposite end we find charms with numerous, lengthy utterances based in the sacramental rite. Over all, associations with Christ’s healing and liturgical Unction are meant to transform faithful charm participants in their time of need.

Liturgical prayer plays a significant role in Anglo-Saxon healing remedies. It is not, contrary to recent studies on prayer, “relatively rare in medical remedies” (Thomas 2020: 224). Chapter 1, “Invoking Baptism,” argues that charms borrow crucial verbal and physical components of the baptismal liturgy in order to invoke the sacrament and its celebration. The most vital of the texts gathered as incantations is the Creed, which lies at the foundation of Baptism. Alongside the Creed appears the Pater Noster, anti-demonic utterances and exorcistic gestures, water and its use for washing, and the Sign of the Cross or Triune blessing. The allusive force of these liturgical artifacts is clear and strong enough, especially when they act as a collective, to evoke the liturgy. The act of recalling the liturgy within the performance arena results in the summoning of the liturgy’s power as a force for healing. Through the manipulation of baptismal forms, charms translate Baptism’s ability to heal the soul into the ability to heal the body. While charms do not exorcize the devil or baptize people in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as is done at Baptism, the sacrament is so essential to the people’s spiritual welfare that healers harness its associations and apply them medicinally in traditional remedies.

The praying of psalms is the subject of Chapter 2. Psalms are frequently sung in charm rituals. They are carefully prescribed to help heal human and animal illness. Acute and painful diseases, such as diarrhea and carbuncles, are treated with psalms, as is fever. Even madness and “fiend-sickness” might respond to them, it was hoped. Psalms have great resonance for the English. They lie at the core of medieval liturgies, both monastic and public. They give hope to the suffering during the Visitation of the Sick. They were offered more generally as personal prayers and as penance. Chapter two establishes the petitionary nature of the psalms used in charm remedies. It demonstrates how psalms structure and organize charm performance with regard to other incantations. Psalms serve as practical prayers, the functionality of which arises out of each psalm’s generic form. They seek God’s assistance by asking the Lord directly or indirectly for aid. Psalms that use figurative language relevant to a charm’s objective employ metaphor and simile that act as vehicles for sympathetic magic. Charms render psalm incantations as powerful medicine for those in need.

Chapter 6 explores charms’ re-purposing of liturgical texts from a theoretical perspective. The integrity of baptismal and Visitatio utterances and acts may be compromised, from a liturgical perspective, when they are reused for charm healing. The accommodations that result allow charms simultaneously to invoke those sacramental liturgies while accomplishing something different. As charms manipulate prayers and formulas extracted from liturgy for folk healing, the re-contextualization results in disparities. These prove important because they reveal the integration of ecclesiastical texts and gestures into traditional practices. When charms adapt particular liturgical texts and actions, the liturgical forms undergo a pragmatic-linguistic process of “de-institutionalization.” The loss of extra-linguistic context supports the charms’ discursive ends and reinforces its status as a distinct institution.

Chapter 5, “The Multiplier Effect,” analyzes the ways in which verbal medicines are combined to effect healing or restore property. The various and multiple utterances individual charms like Lacnunga xxix perform can be ascribed to a programmatic approach to remedy. Combination therapy relies on an agglutinative process whereby separate utterances complement one another. The resulting amalgamation is more than the sum of its parts, however, and may be attributed to the multiplier effect. Charms combine verbal medicines in order to pursue every means of supplication available to God’s people: prayer to God, prayer for saints to intervene with God on the supplicant’s behalf, and liturgical prayer through the healing ministry of the Church.