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This course is interested the way people used language in the past. It is situated in the field of historical pragmatics, a branch of linguistics which investigates the communicative practices of earlier periods and their changes over time. The major problem for historical pragmaticians is certainly the dearth of natural language data. However, the fact that we have to rely exclusively on written documents does not limit linguistic research to written genres. Historical texts also provide an abundance of information about the spoken interactions of the past, even including nonverbal aspects. This course will introduce major research interests, methodological approaches, and findings in the field.
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