My research is interested in the pre-Old English runic corpus, which is a corpus defined as runic inscriptions with find-spots in Britain which are dated before c.650CE, and has been labelled a Trümmersprache, a ‘remains language’ (written fragmentary data). 

My over-arching research question is, ‘what are the functions of the pre-Old English runic inscriptions?’. By asking this question, I am planning to tackle the theoretical problem of what we mean by the ‘functions’ of a text. Do we mean communicative functions, and what does that entail? Can texts with no discernable lexical item be communicative, and if so, how? How do we determine non-communicative functions of runic script, and what would they be? 

My methodology will use approaches from runology, historical pragmatics (especially pragmaphilology), and archeology and material culture studies. I hope to research how to adapt historical pragmatics to Trümmersprache data and the methodological issues of applying certain areas of linguistics to fragmentary data.