Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10:2 (2009), 286–309. doi 10.1075/jhp.10.2.07arc issn 1566–5852 / e-issn 1569–9854 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Identifying key sociophilological usage in plays and trial proceedings (1640–1760) An empirical approach via corpus annotation Dawn Archer and Jonathan Culpeper University of Central Lancashire / University of Lancaster In this paper, we argue that there is another approach to the study of histori- cal pragmatics beyond those explicitly mentioned in Jacobs and Jucker (1995). We label this approach “sociophilology”. Moreover, we demonstrate how this approach can be efectively pursued by combining two corpus linguistics tech- niques: corpus annotation and “keyness” analysis. Specifcally, we draw from the Sociopragmatic Corpus (1640–1760), an annotated subsection of comedy plays and drama proceedings taken from the Corpus of Dialogues 1560–1760, as a means of identifying the statistically-based style markers, or key items, associ- ated with a number of social role dyads (including examiner to examinee and master/mistress to servant). We will show how such an approach might be used to uncover diferential distributions of personal pronouns, interjections, impera- tive verbs, politeness formulae, etc., and how, by combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, one can scrutinise such material for pragmatic import. 1. Introduction According to Jacobs and Jucker (1995), there are two basic approaches to studying change in pragmatic phenomena over time (i.e. “diachronic pragmatics”): – “Pragmalinguistics” (= form to function); tracing how a particular form has undergone functional change. Te study of pragmatic markers has been a popular focus of the pragmalinguistic approach. Pragmatic theory is ofen blended with semantic theory and cognitive theory. – “Sociopragmatics” (= function to form); tracing how a particular function has changed the form(s) it employs. Studies in this approach have considered speech act functions, politeness, swearing, arguing and genres. Not surpris- ingly, pragmatic theory tends to be infuenced by social theory.