Blurb:

Chapter 3, on methodological aspects, opens with an introduction (section 3.1), then section 3.2 reviews data sources in pragmatics, and in particular historical pragmatics, while section 3.3 examines how they are used in research practice. Section 3.4 deals with contextual analysis as a central tool in historical pragmatics methodology, while section 3.5 offers methods used to guess meanings in historical documents. Section 3.6 focuses on a presentation of the p-model and its notion of data, which serves as a basis of the methodological part of the study. Argumentation methods in historical pragmatics and the usefulness of methodological considerations when deciding between rival hypotheses are discussed in this section, too.