Understanding Pragmatics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Language Use (Understanding Language) - Softcover

Senft, Gunter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444180304 ISBN 13: 9781444180305

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

Understanding Pragmatics takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide an accessible introduction to linguistic pragmatics. This book discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. From a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, this book:

• debates the core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual communication, phatic communion, linguistic relativity, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, languages and social classes, and linguistic ideologies
• incorporates examples from a broad variety of different languages and cultures
• takes an innovative and transdisciplinary view of the field showing linguistic pragmatics has its predecessor in other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, ethology, ethnology, sociology and the political sciences.

Written by an experienced teacher and researcher, this introductory textbook is essential reading for all students studying pragmatics.

About this title

About the Author

Gunter Senft is senior investigator at the MPI for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and extraordinary professor of general linguistics at the University of Cologne. His main research interests include Austronesian and Papuan languages, anthropological linguistics, pragmatics, and semantics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1444180304
• ISBN 13: 9781444180305
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232