The volume contributes to historical pragmatics an important chapter on what
has so far not been paid adequate attention to, i.e. historical metapragmatics.
More particularly, the collected papers apply a meta-communicative approach
to historical texts by focusing on lexis that either directly or metaphorically
identifies or characterizes entire forms of communication or single acts and
act sequences or minor units. Within the context of their use, such lexical
expressions, in fact, provide a key for disclosing historical forms of
communication; taken out of context, they build the meta-communicative
The articles follow three principal distinctions in that they investigate the
meta-communicative profile of genres, meta-communicative lexical sets and
meta-communicative ethics and ideologies. They cover a broad spectrum of
text types that span the entire history of the English language from Anglo-
Saxon chronicles to computer-mediated communication.