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 sociopragmatics studies the social dimension of language use from a historical perspective. Like historical pragmatics in general, it must rely on written data (except for the very recent past), which poses some specific analytical challenges. In this contribution, we show how approaches to these challenges have developed in recent years. The research focus in historical sociopragmatics has followed the trend in sociopragmatics, where the earlier focus on a mapping between specific linguistic forms and specific pragmatic functions is increasingly extended to a wider consideration of the discursive nature of pragmatic entities whose function only emerges in the interaction between conversational partners. We illustrate such a discursive approach with an analysis of a sequence of letters from the Breadalbane Collection, 1548--83, in which leading members of a Scottish Highland clan negotiate their relationships, their respective roles and the wider impact of events that led to growing tensions between them.