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