Methods in Historical Corpus Pragmatics

Daniela Landert is Professor of English Linguistics at Heidelberg University. Her research interests include historical pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, the study of (spontaneous) spoken language, pragmatics of fiction, and modality. She is the author of Personalisation in Mass Media Communication (John Benjamins, 2014) and Editor of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics.

• Preface; 1. Introduction; Part 1. Theoretical Background: 2. Historical corpus pragmatics; 3. Stance in Early Modern English; Part II. Methodology: 4. Compiling inventories of lexical stance markers; 5. Retrieving high-density passages; Part III. Empirical Studies: 6. Lexical stance markers in high-density passages; 7. Contextual factors and rhetorical strategies; 8. Meta-communicative expressions and stance: I say and I tell (you); 9. Expressing certainty in different genres; 10. Conclusion; Data; Appendix A: List of high-density passages; Appendix B: Stance inventory.

'Earlier research has often assumed that Early Modern English is relatively poor in epistemic stance markers. This outstanding monograph demonstrates that appropriate, innovative corpus methods reveal a much richer picture of the many creative ways in which Early Modern English conveyed degrees of certainty and reliability of information.' Andreas H. Jucker, Professor Emeritus of English Linguistics, University of Zurich