The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity, especially to
rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However, until the
end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be
consigned to the pragmatic, that is rhetoric, wastepaper basket
and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration. It
can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830
in Britain, but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian
and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early
'conceptions' of pragmatics are described in the first part of
the book. The second part of the book looks at pragmatic
insights made between 1830 and 1880, when they were once more
relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The
main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical
comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly
spiritualised philosophy on the other. In the last part the
period between 1880 and 1930 is presented, when pragmatic
insights flourished and were sought after systematically