This volume reflects the results of a workshop on the investigation of specialized discourse in a diachronic perspective held within the 15th European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes New Trends in Specialized Discourse Bergamo 2005. The articles deal with developments from the late medieval period to the present day and the book encompasses studies in which the longestablished tradition of domainspecific English is highlighted. The fields of contributions range from scientific to legal to political and business discourse. Special attention is given to argumentation in an attempt to assess the timedepth of typical rhetorical strategies. Some methodological innovations are introduced in corpus linguistics. Numerous contributions bring new materials to scholarly discussion as recently released or inprogress secondgeneration corpora are used as data. Recent changes in presentday legal and scientific writing are also discussed as they witness fast adaptation to new requirements due to the advent and growing familiarity of new technologies international law and changes in academia.