Jonathan Culpepper is Professor of Language and Linguistics at the University of Lancaster, UK. His research interests include stylistics, pragmatics, and The history of the English language. Co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pragmatics, his publications include History of English (Routledge, 1997), Exploring the Language of Drama (Routledge, 1998, co-edited with Mick Short and Peter Verdonk), Language and Characterisation in Plays and Other Texts (2001) and research collected volume Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis (2002).