Chapter 4 introduces the categories of speech and thought representation and traces their development in the history of English. Categories of speech representation can be identified in Old and Middle English, but thought representation existed only in the more narrator-controlled forms such as indirect thought and narrative representation of thought; mixed forms, such as “slippage” between direct and indirect speech, were common. The conventionalization of quotation marks in Early Modern English led to the clearer marking of direct speech. Overall, there is a general trend from more indirect (narrator-controlled, summarizing) forms to more direct (autonomous or non-narrator-controlled, verbatim) forms of representation. For all periods, (free) direct speech is the norm for speech representation. Internal narration takes over from narrative representation of thought in the modern period. Free indirect discourse did not exist in earlier English, arising perhaps in proto-form in the seventeenth century, but became fully conventionalized only in the course of the nineteenth century. Present-day English is characterized by the rise of new reporting verbs, especially go and be like.

Chapter 1 introduces the field of historical pragmatics. The rise of historical pragmatics in the mid-1990s was the result of changes in both linguistics and pragmatics. In linguistics, a reawakened interest in historical linguistics, combined with an emphasis on language as performance, on the ephemeral aspects of language, on meanings as negotiated in use, with the importance of social and cultural factors in shaping language use, with the increased importance of the analysis of empirical data, made easier by the development of computer corpora, all set the groundwork for the rise of historical pragmatics. In pragmatics, it was the recognition that written discourse, and not just oral discourse, constituted communicative acts produced in a social and cultural context, and was thus a valid subject of pragmatic study. The scope of historical pragmatics spans the two branches of pragmatics, the Anglo-American and the European Continental branch, with two aligned fields – historical sociolinguistics and historical sociopragmatics – having affinity with the latter. The chapter includes an introductory case study of pragmatic markers exemplifying the approach of historical pragmatics.

Historical pragmatics encompasses the subfields of historical pragmatics (proper), with static focus on pragmatic forms and functions in earlier language stages, and diachronic pragmatics, with dynamic focus on changes over time. Within each subfield, one can focus on the level of expressions (words, phrases, clauses), utterances (speech acts), and discourse (register, genre, style). But the “bad data” problem means that for the past we lack naturally occurring oral conversation, where pragmatic meaning, such as speaker attitude and speaker–hearer interaction, is most obvious. However, from the medieval period, we have records which, while they come down to us in written form, represent authentic (“speech-based”) dialogue (court transcripts, depositions, parliamentary proceedings), constructed or “speech-purposed” dialogue (dramatic and fictional dialogue) or intended for oral delivery (sermons, prayers). “Speech-like” texts are more or less colloquial in nature (personal letters, diaries). Many of these documents are now accessible in multi-genre and specialized, single-genre electronic corpora. Finally, this chapter contemplates the possibility of pragmatic corpus annotation.

Chapter 5 introduces two approaches to politeness: politeness as the avoidance of face-threatening acts and politeness as the enhancement of communicative concord. Over time, politeness has changed significantly. The Old English period was a period of “discernment” politeness, growing out of the fixed social order. The Middle English period saw the rise of “deference” politeness following the French fashion (i.e., the honorific system of second-person pronouns). A face-based system began in Early Modern English, but studies are not consistent in finding this to be a positive or negative politeness system. The deference politeness system fell out of use. The eighteenth century extolled polite manners and behavior and has been described as a “compliment culture”. The modern period is characterized by “non-imposition” politeness, most obvious in the development of indirect directives (negative politeness). At the same time, a system of camaraderie politeness, which increases solidarity and eliminates distance between individuals, coexists (positive politeness). The chapter provides case studies of compliments, insults, thanks, and responses to thanks in the history of English.

Chapter 8 provides a select introduction to register, genre, and style. The multidimensional analysis of style reveals a gradual drift from “literate” to “oral” over time. Attention is given here to the news and religious registers. The news register has seen the rise of the newspaper, leading to the introduction of new publication types, such as television, radio, and internet news, and new genres, such as editorials, obituaries, or weather forecasts. The religious register has a long history and has been remarkably stable. Two religious genres, prayers and sermons, have changed little in respect to function, structure, and linguistic characteristics. The function of recipes remains constant (i.e., instructions on how to prepare or do something), thus accounting for the imperative as the defining linguistic form, but we find differences in the content of recipes (medicinal vs. culinary), in the audience of recipes (e.g., the professional vs. the amateur cook), in the structural elements found in recipes (e.g., separation of the ingredients and the procedural steps), and in characteristic linguistic features (e.g., the introduction of null objects and telegraphic style).

Chapter 7 examines both second-person pronouns and nominal terms of address (vocatives). In Middle English, the original singular and plural second-person pronouns came to distinguish differences between interlocutors, with the singular thou denoting lesser status/age power or increased solidarity, intimacy, or informality and the plural you denoting higher status/age/power or greater emotional distance or formality. In Early Modern English, the use of the pronouns for affective purposes was common, showing “retractability”. Loss of thou for various sociolinguistic reasons was complete by 1700, leaving English without an honorific form or a number distinction in the second person. Vocatives underwent less systematic change, but moved in the same general direction. The elaborate vocatives of Early Modern English, which delineated a person’s rank and status, were replaced by a more diffuse collection of vocatives, with preference increasingly given to first names, family names, “familiarizers,” and endearments, all of which served to increase rapport and create a sense of equality. They form part of the phenomenon of “camaraderie politeness” dominant in Present-day English.

This chapter provides a summary of the book, which has attempted to describe the scope and nature of historical pragmatics in the first quarter of the twenty-first century and bring together a wide range of studies in the field. The chapter then reflects on issues arising from such studies and on gaps or limitations of existing work. Finally, it looks ahead to future research possibilities in the field of historical pragmatics.

Chapter 3 explores the characteristics of pragmatic markers and focuses on both their function during a particular period and their development over time. Diachronically, pragmatic markers develop from content words, phrases, or clauses that gradually acquire a distinctive syntactic form and discourse-pragmatic functions and follow various pathways, from adverb > conjunction > pragmatic marker, from sentence-internal adverb > sentential adverb > pragmatic marker, from main clause > ambiguous clause > parenthetical, from adverbial or imperative clause > pragmatic marker. A number of examples of such pathways are provided, where it is shown that the historical data may be messy and require nuanced interpretation. For clausal pragmatic markers, the “matrix clause hypothesis” is critically examined. The process of language change that best accounts for the development of pragmatic markers, including lexicalization, pragmaticalization, grammaticalization, and cooptation, is still a matter of debate, though the majority view is that if “grammar” is broadly understood, pragmatic markers are best seen as undergoing grammaticalization (decategorialization, desemanticization).

Chapter 6 introduces the concepts relevant to speech act theory and discusses difficulties in the study of speech acts, both limitations of the form-to-function approach and obstacles to the function-to-form approach; it then reviews the work-arounds suggested in the literature, including the use of illocutionary-force-indicative devices, of typical syntactic patterns for different speech acts, and of metacommunicative labels. After looking at several studies of performative verbs, the chapter then reviews historical studies of directive, commissive, and expressive speech acts in English. Directives in earlier English would seem to be more direct than we find today, but this can be attributed to the more fixed social structure, not to less politeness. Apologies, curses, greetings, and leave-takings represent expressives that have undergone change in the history of English, in respect to both their formal expression and their functional profile, that is, the very nature of the speech act itself. For example, promises of medieval times, which did not depend upon the sincerity condition of the speaker but were nevertheless “binding,” now rest fundamentally upon this condition.

Sentence–final is all has received little attention in the literature. Its use is a relatively recent development since the late nineteenth century, mostly restricted to colloquial American English (Delin 1992; Follett 1998). This chapter demonstrates that is all does not appear to represent reported speech so much as to refer back to the preceding text, in line with the OED’s claim that sentence–final is all implies ‘that is all there is to be said’. The chapter demonstrates that speakers often use sentence–final is all to close a topic and to distance themselves from an unwanted interpretation of the preceding utterance. In contrast, sentence–final that BE all ranges from literal meanings to the more (inter)subjective pragmatic meanings of is all.

The second half of the chapter examines the historical development, drawing on data from various corpora. The authors argue that sentence–final is all derives from postponed independent or conjoined that BE all by processes of phonological reduction and deletion with subsequent reanalysis. A conversational implicature arose from that is all ‘do not infer anything more’, triggering the development of reduced is all toward a discourse–pragmatic marker.