Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of figures and tables ix
4. To readers xi
5. 1 Historical pragmatics: Communicative patterns of the past 1
6. 2 The widening perspectives of the digital era: Data in historical pragmatics 13
7. 3 Excavating usage patterns: Methods in historical pragmatics 31
8. 4 ‘Lo, which a greet thyng is affeccioun!’: Discourse markers and interjections 54
9. 5 ‘For I thou thee, thou Traitor’: Terms of address 73
10. 6 ‘No one can flatter so prettily as you do’: Speech acts 92
11. 7 ‘For your curteisie’: Forms of politeness and impoliteness 113
12. 8 The pragmatics of language change: Grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation 130
13. 9 ‘Take a pounde of sugir and halfe a pounde of tendir roses lyues . . .’: Genres and text types 146
14. 10 ‘I pray thee friend Humfrey, what is phisicke?’: Scientific and medical discourse 164
15. 11 ‘By letters from Riga we have advice’: Historical news discourse 183
16. 12 ‘Fire! Help! Sir Walter has studied till his Head’s on fire’: Narrative patterns and historical pragmatics 200
17. Corpora and other electronic data sources 218
18. References 220
19. Index 234