Current Trends in Pragmatics by Piotr Cap and Joanna Nijakowska

by Piotr Cap

The volume brings together twenty articles written by established linguists, language philosophers, sociologists and psychologists, sharing their academic interest in a broad and interdisciplinary field of linguistic pragmatics. The collection consists of four thematic Pragmatics and Cognition, The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface, Conversational and Text Analysis and Pragmatics, Social Research and Didactics. It aims to contribute to the debate on the present-day status of pragmatics, by examining three fundamental issues. The first involves the question of the current explanatory power of pragmatics, namely, how successful is the existing apparatus of pragmatics and the basic-level parameters (theories of speech acts, relevance, implicature, presupposition, deixis, politeness, etc.) in the elucidation of various aspects of meaning. The second issue involves the methodological assistance that pragmatics might need in order to enhance its explanatory power. The third has to do with the fuzzily defined boundaries of the discipline of pragmatics and the resulting temptation for analysts to concentrate solely on its fragmented sub-domains. As the collection unfolds, these issues form a continuum which, it seems, is often a process that a linguist goes through as his or her methodological awareness deepens. Thus, the orientation of the volume towards the analyst and the analytic mind-set, as well as the attempted balance in presentation of the alternative approaches, seem the major theoretical characteristic of the book. 'This anthology excellently illustrates the current understanding of pragmatics as a multidisciplinary approach that involves the relationship between cognitive processes, socio-cultural facts, and language use and language form. With its twenty chapters this impressive volume presents a wide-ranging, lucid and stimulating state-of-the-art overview of key theoretical issues, empirical research, and various forms of analyses of linguistic phenomena within the field of linguistic pragmatics. Moroever, it also emphasizes the relevance of pragmatics for other social, especially political and applied research. It is a valuable contribution to pragmatics and will be of interest for many students and scholars in many disciplines'. Prof. Dr. Gunter Senft Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen Senior Editor of Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association

Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007