Introduction

This special issue offers a selection of internationally peer-reviewed articles in historical pragmatics by well-established senior as well as more junior scholars. Most originate from presentations given at the international conference “Language use across time: what you didn’t know you’ve always wanted to know about historical pragmatics”, held at Padua University on 16-17 February, 2018. The contributions highlight varied historical pragmatics topics, such as interactional strategies, politeness phenomena in grammar and discourse, the evolution of discursive practices, lexemes and phraseology. The scope of data ranges from spill cries in American English to politeness phenomena in Russian historical texts, from linguistic features in classical Greek drama to private correspondence in English, from minutes of Quaker meetings through language teaching materials to paradigm changes in Korean sentence types. Although the articles are focused on language-specific phenomena, most offer a cross-linguistic perspective.