The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of an interest in historical pragmatics, broadly defined as the study of language use in the past, and how such usage has changed over time. Beginning with Jucker (Reference Jucker1995), then followed by Fitzmaurice & Taavitsainen (Reference Fitzmaurice and Taavitsainen2007) and ultimately by The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics (Jucker & Taavitsainen Reference Jucker and Taavitsainen2010), research focusing on historical patterns of language use has made its way into the mainstream of linguistic inquiry. However, the present work is the first textbook designed specifically to provide an introduction to this new branch of linguistics.

The twelve chapters each contain a discussion of a particular topic with plenty of examples, a list of exercises, and suggested readings for further study. And in addition to the standard list of references and index found at the end of every textbook, the authors also provide a list of corpora and other electronic resources relevant to the field of historical pragmatics.

The first three chapters survey the methodological foundations of historical pragmatics. Chapter 1 provides an overview of ‘Historical pragmatics: communicative patterns of the past’. After defining historical pragmatics as the study of language use of the past, the authors discuss the scope of pragmatics, contrasting theoretical (Anglo-American) pragmatics with the social (Continental European) pragmatics tradition. They also place the birth of historical pragmatics in the historical context of the emergence of sociolinguistics in the 1970s and the development of interest in heterogenous language structures, externalised language, empirical investigations, discursive features, together with a renewed interest in diachrony.

Chapter 2 examines ‘The widening perspective of the digital era: data in historical pragmatics’, with a discussion of the move away from valuing the primacy of spoken data to accepting written data on its own terms. This, combined with the increasing amount of digitised corpora and text collections available, has led to a steady rise in an empirical basis available for research in historical pragmatics. But if one is interested in capturing the speech patterns of the past, the authors provide a model of ‘immediacy’ and ‘distance’ in writing (Koch & Oesterreicher Reference Koch, Oesterreicher and Deutschmann1985), as well as examining the role that monologic and dialogic texts, and other written representations of speech, can play in the study of historical speech patterns. The possibility of studying recent change in spoken language through the use of speech recordings is also given some attention.

In chapter 3, ‘Excavating usage patterns: methods in historical pragmatics’, the emphasis is on the need for qualitative analysis of data plus the quantitative possibilities provided by advances in corpus linguistics. The philological roots of historical pragmatics are also given attention: the role of context, the circumstances of text production, plus the role of authors and audiences in text interpretation. This is illustrated with an analysis of an eighteenth-century advertisement and a sixteenth-century medical dialogue (with the original texts provided for reference). On the quantitative side of things, the authors discuss the analytic tools of corpus linguistics: KWIC (Key Word in Context) concordances, keyword analysis, collocations and lexical bundles. They also provide step-by-step advice on establishing a research agenda within historical pragmatics.

The focus changes to a discussion of specific phenomena in chapter 4, which is dedicated to ‘Discourse markers and interjections’ and provides a diachronically focused discussion of the use of certain discourse markers (well, alas, you know) and interjections (oh, ah) in English. The authors see the use and development of such items falling on a continuum from inserts (stand-alone, polysemous words) to ‘pragmatic noise’ (Culpeper & Kytö Reference Culpeper and Kytö2010), items with no homonyms in other word classes. The role of genre in the development of these markers is given attention, and the important point is made that many of the earliest written texts were meant to be read aloud, which accounts for the appearance of such items from a very early period. The chapter concludes with case studies of oh! and alas!, where the authors give attention to the various insights provided by Google Books Ngrams, corpora and close reading.

‘Terms of address’ are the focus of chapter 5, with a presentation of the complex history of the two-tier (T/V, i.e. familiar vs unfamiliar) address system and nominal address forms in English. No T/V system is attested in Old English, but there is evidence for deferential forms of address, such as with hlaford. Middle English is more complex, as the T/V system is attested here. Determination on which form (thou vs ye) was used is highly context-dependent, and an extended discussion of the use of terms of address in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which presents a diverse array of characters and narrators, is provided. A following discussion on Shakespeare's use of pronouns demonstrates how the system was in flux during the Early Modern English period. Letters from this period are also examined, so that non-literary data is also taken into account. The chapter concludes with a discussion of (pro)nominal terms of address in Present-day English.

In chapter 6, a historical pragmatic account of ‘Speech acts’ is provided, beginning with an introduction to the work of Austin (Reference Austin1962) and Searle (Reference Searle1969, Reference Searle1979), plus a discussion of locution, illocution and perlocution. The challenges involved in using corpora to search for speech acts is discussed, although the authors provide recommendations for looking for typical patterns of speech acts, illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) and expressions of metacommunication. This is followed by four case studies on how this methodology can shed light on diachronic speech act analysis: the evolution of goodbye, promises, directives, and insults and compliments.

In chapter 7, the attention shifts to ‘Forms of politeness and impoliteness’, beginning with a discussion of the difficulties of pinning down this ‘secondary’ function of language. After differentiating between first-order and second-order politeness, and positive face and negative face, the authors focus their attention on Old English and the domains of kinship, loyalty, caritas and humilitas. A discussion of the Middle English notion of courtesy follows, which relies heavily on Chaucer for data. As in chapter 5, Shakespeare informs the discussion of the Early Modern English period, and the chapter concludes with an overview of the present-day situation.

Larger processes involving pragmatic aspects of language change are the focus of chapter 8, ‘The pragmatics of language change: grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation’. The chapter begins with an overview of grammaticalisation, the process whereby lexical items lose their lexicosemantic content but gain grammatical or pragmatic meaning (Hopper & Traugott Reference Hopper and Traugott2003). The regularities involved in this process are also given attention, with the notion of invited inferencing (Traugott & Dasher Reference Traugott and Dasher2005) and the evolution of the phrase as long as receiving particular attention. The connections between grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation are discussed, and the development of Jesus from referring to a religious figure to being used as a taboo expletive and interjection receives significant attention. The development of well from its textual to its interpersonal function is also discussed.

‘Genre and text types’, whose significance is of key importance to historical pragmatics, is the topic of chapter 9. But how does one approach the study of situated language use, or even define genre at all? Both the prototype approach and biological metaphors are presented as possible solutions. Genre and text type are differentiated, with the latter being defined by internal linguistic features and the former by external, societal factors. The notion of discourse communities is introduced, and various possible methodologies for the study of historical genre analysis are introduced: systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen Reference Halliday and Matthiessen2013), multidimensional analysis (Biber Reference Biber1989), text linguistics (Werlich Reference Werlich1982) and cognitive linguistics, particularly the notion of frames (Fillmore Reference Fillmore, Lee and Hakhoe1982). The chapter ends with a discussion of recipes – which have remained stable throughout the history of English – and personal letters, which have constantly changed over time, especially recently due to the advent of electronic communication.

Chapter 10 homes in on a specific discourse domain, ‘Scientific and medical discourse’, in which Jucker and Taavitsainen discuss how one can trace the development of a specific discourse domain diachronically, noting the significance of the transition from Latin to English as the lingua franca in the case of scientific writing. Changing definitions of science (and pseudo-science) are given attention, as are the changing methodologies within science (i.e. the move from medieval scholasticism to modern empiricism). Also discussed in this chapter is the role both educated and lay audiences play in the production of scientific texts.

Chapter 11, ‘Historical news discourse’, traces the history of this genre from the role of town criers in the Middle Ages to the Internet in our present-day. The significant impact which Gutenberg's invention of the printing press had on news reporting is highlighted, as is the seventeenth-century revolution in news reporting and dissemination. The changing structure of newspapers is discussed, with a focus placed on the headline and the narrative structure of news articles. The chapter concludes with a discussion of news on the Internet and an outlook towards the future.

Chapter 12, the final chapter, is dedicated to ‘Narrative patterns and historical pragmatics’. Here, the authors note how a broadly construed notion of ‘storytelling’ as a genre finds itself at the intersection of literary studies, stylistics, corpus linguistics, text linguistics and historical linguistics. The genre of ‘fairy tale’ receives significant attention, especially the original English translation of Little Red Riding-hood. Episode boundary markers, adjectives, pronouns and deixis, and speech and thought presentation are all considered in the authors’ detailed analysis of this classic fairy tale. The notion of the ‘natural narrative’ (Labov & Waletzky Reference Labov and Waletzky1967) is borrowed from sociolinguistics, and attention is also given to the historical development of genres and the verse/prose divide. The chapter concludes with a section of cultural influences on literature and narrative, with a particular focus on the role of the Bible throughout the history of English literature.

English Historical Pragmatics is an excellent overview of the field of historical pragmatics, and a much-needed contribution to teaching the discipline. Every chapter is well organised and easy to follow, and there are numerous examples from a variety of genres that help the authors elucidate their main points. Even better is the fact that many of the textual examples consist of facsimile copies of the original manuscript integrated into the running text of the chapter, and this provides the reader with a more holistic understanding of text structure and production. The balance between qualitative and quantitative analysis is also maintained throughout the book. The exercises at the end of each chapter are clear and always draw on actual language data of the past, allowing students to actively engage in historical pragmatic analysis from the start. Suggestions for future research are also provided.

However, given that this is a textbook and not a research monograph, a glossary of key terms and concepts would perhaps have been welcome. Jucker and Taavitsainen introduce a lot of new material in each chapter, and some sort of reference to key terms – either at the end of each chapter, or at the very end of the book – would have been useful, as would some sort of appendix or supplement with a discussion of ‘answers’ to the exercises. It is true that the nature of most of the exercises might preclude a straightforward answer key, but even if this were so, students could at least be provided with an idea of the appropriateness of their analyses. This is probably not a major issue, though, since ample examples and analysis are provided in each chapter, and readers should have been made aware of how to analyse texts by the time they get to the exercises section of each text.

Neither of these criticisms, however, affects the actual content of this textbook, which provides an excellent and much-needed overview of the field of historical pragmatics. This is a must-read for anyone interested in historical pragmatics, the history of the English language or historical corpus linguistics.