New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

This reader, edited by Dawn Archer and Peter Grundy (henceforth A&G), comprises26 core articles in the field, many of them classics, from leading figures inpragmatics. It also includes four papers specially solicited for the presentcollection. Apart from an introductory section (section 1) and a concludingsection (section 10, Theory and Practice in Pragmatics), the 28 contributionsare placed in thematic groupings: (2) Linguistic Pragmatics, (3) Post-GriceanPragmatics, (4) Indexicality, (5) Historical Pragmatics, (6) Politeness, Faceand Impoliteness, (7) Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics, (8)Pragmatics and Conversation -- Development and Impairment, (9) Pragmaticians onPragmatics.

The introduction provides a survey of the pragmatics enterprise, thereby settingthe scene for the remaining articles. First, the editors start theirintroduction by tentatively defining pragmatics as 'the study of meaning incontext'. On this basis, they specify different competing paradigms of research.With regard to the relationship between meaning and context, they distinguishthose who regard context as presumptive and those who consider context asemergent. In terms of the scope of context, they differentiate a narrow andidealized view of context from those views which interpret context as broadsociocultural or mental phenomena. They also present different theoreticalperspectives concerning the semantics/pragmatics interface. Finally, theintroduction also offers a snapshot of the readings which follow.

Section 2, ''Linguistic Pragmatics'', presents readings concerning three essentialissues of linguistic pragmatics -- speech acts, conversational implicature, andpresupposition. The editors' introduction provides some background knowledge andoverview of the readings, as is done in other sections. In terms of speech acttheory, J.L. Austin's ''How to Do Things with Words'' and John Searle's ''IndirectSpeech Acts'' are presented. In the former, the editors include Austin'sdistinction of the three levels of speech acts: locutionary, illocutionary andperlocutionary acts; the latter reading presents Searle's proposition of certain'rules' or 'conditions' for a speech act to be successful and his explanation ofhow we can derive the primary illocutionary act of indirect speech from theliteral illocution. The third article is selected from H.P. Grice's canonicalwork, ''Logic and Conversation'', which brings forth the concept of implicatureand its inference mechanism, the Cooperative Principle and conversationalmaxims. The next two readings are devoted to presupposition. Arguing against thetwo-value logic treatment of presupposition, Pieter Seuren's paper addressesnumerous issues concerning existential presupposition and negation, andconcludes that presupposition is a pragmatic phenomenon. In his paper 'PragmaticPresuppositions', R. C. Stalnaker bases his discussion of presupposition on theshared assumptions of speakers and addressees, which he calls the 'commonground', and argues that this notion can offer “both rigorous and intuitivelynatural” (p. 77) explanations of various facets of presupposition.

Section 3 is divided into two subsections, reflecting two differing lines ofdevelopment of Grice's conversation implicature theory: One, called'neo-Gricean' pragmatics, is a follow-up refinement of Gricean theory; theother, named 'Post-Gricean' pragmatics' or relevance theoretic pragmatics, is anew orientation beyond Grice's framework, although inspired by it in the firstplace. In contrast to Grice's doubt on the necessity of the second maxim ofQuantity, Levinson justifies its status as a maxim of minimalization andreformulates it as the Principle of Informativeness or the I-Principle. Comparedwith Grice's version, this new rendition takes both speaker and listener intoaccount and is more detailed and operational than their earlier proposal (Atlasand Levinson 1981). Then in the second part of this selection, Levinsonelaborates the significance of Generalized Conversational Implicature (GCI) tothe pragmatics/semantics interface, or to the construction of the general theoryof meaning, claiming that GCI can contribute to propositional content and is theinput to truth conditions. The next reading is a new paper on lexicalpragmatics. Working in a neo-Gricean framework, which assumes the Q principleand the R principle, Blutner draws on optimality theory to explain “themechanism by which linguistically-specified word meanings are modified in use”(p. 101). It can be noted that Blutner, in his discussion, compares andcontrasts optimality theory and relevance theory, so his reading provides asmooth transition from neo-Gricean pragmatics to post-Gricean pragmatics.

The groups of readings in the next subsection bring us beyond linguisticpragmatics and philosophy of language to the domain of cognitive pragmatics andphilosophy of mind. This subsection starts with two readings offering anoverview of relevance theory: Blakemore's paper, published in 1995, provides aninterpretation and comment on Sperber and Wilson (1986); Clark's articlediscusses the major modifications of relevance theory from the “postface” (asopposed to “preface”) of Sperber and Wilson (second edition 1995) and surveysthe recent developments and applications of relevance theory since 1995. RobynCarston's reading is extracted from her 2002 book dedicated to explicitcommunication. This selection reflects her amendments to Sperber and Wilson'snotion of explicature and her unique redefinition of this concept. This sectionends with Sperber and Wilson's paper which focuses on the mapping between wordsand concepts. They claim that there is no exhaustive one-to-one mapping betweenconcepts and words, and “words are used as pointers to contextually intendedsenses” (p. 160). So in inferential communication, the speaker's utterances arehis/her evidence of his/her intention, the understanding of which requires thelistener's construction of ad hoc concepts.

Indexicality, a topic which many pragmatics books tend to put before othertopics like speech act theory, implicature, presupposition, etc. is placed insection 4 where three representative readings are selected, the reason beingthat A&G “make the transition from theories of language usage, typicallyexemplified with invented examples or with examples abstracted from realcontexts of use, to explanations of contextualized language” (p. 164). That isto say, discussions of indexicality rely on naturally-occurring data. In hispaper ''Deixis'', Stephen C. Levinson first presents some challenges ofindexicality, including its semantic deficiency, its dependence on context forachieving reference and its lack of clear boundaries. He then reviews theapproaches to this phenomenon from semantics and philosophy of language, andillustrates the role of pragmatics in the resolution of deictic expressions.Finally, he concentrates on six deictic categories. ''Alternative grounds in theinterpretation of deictic expressions'' by Jo Rubba attempts to explain how placedeictics whose referents are not present in the immediate utterance situationare processed. The author approaches this phenomenon by drawing on keytheoretical models from cognitive linguistics, such as mental spaces, profilingand Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs). Jef Verschueren, in ''Notes on the role ofmetapragmatic awareness in language use'', treats deixis as an implicitmetalinguistic phenomenon and extends indexicality beyond deictics to include “avery wide range of phenomena that index, guide or constrain the desiredpragmatic interpretation of utterances and link code and message overtly” (p.165). Notably, he argues that it is “absolutely necessary” to see indexicalityas a dimension of language rather than an object. This article also expounds onthe functions of metapragmatic awareness and its social implications concerninglanguage ideologies and identity construction.

The three readings in section 5, ''Historical Pragmatics'', adopt a diachronicperspective to investigate the evolution of certain pragmatic features. In ''Therole of pragmatics in semantic change'', Elizabeth Closs Traugott introduces herown model for explaining semantic change -- the Invited Inferencing Theory ofSemantic Change (IITSC). This model stresses that it is“speaker/writer-negotiated meaning [that] motivates the strong tendency insemantic change toward subjectification” (p. 225). She demonstrates theexplanatory power of her model by applying it to explaining the change of 'as/solong as' in English. The next two readings explore diachronic change ofpragmatic markers and speech acts respectively. Laurel Brinton's readingaddresses 'I gesse' in Middle English. She discusses the functions andgrammaticalization process of pragmatic markers. Andreas Jucker and IrmaTaavitsainen in their paper, ''Diachronic speech act analysis: Insults fromflyting to flaming'', offers an account of the speech act of insulting, coveringthe diachronic changes of their realization and their underlying speechfunction. Notably, it adopts a prototype-based approach to speech acts and itsapplicability to other speech acts besides insulting.

Section 6, “Politeness, Face and Impoliteness”, starts with an extract fromErving Goffman's book ''On facework: An analysis of ritual elements in socialinteraction'', a pioneering work in the field of 'face' and 'facework'. Inchoosing Goffman's material, A&G opt for those notions which are inherited ordeveloped by the following three readings, making these group of readings highlyconnected. In ''Politeness: some universals in language use'', Penelope Brown andStephen C. Levinson define several key concepts concerning politeness such as'positive face', 'negative face', 'rational agents', and 'face threatening acts(FTA)'. They also propose five strategies to minimize the threat when doing FTAsand discuss the factors that can influence the choice of these strategies. Theirmethod is to construct an idealized model person (MP) and attribute politenessto a rational MP's wants. In contrast, ''Politeness, face and impoliteness'' byMiriam Locher and Richard Watts, views politeness as a social norm. They placemore emphasis on the role of participants themselves, taking 'impolite' or'polite' to refer to participants' judgment of their co-participant's verbalbehavior in ongoing social interaction. This more dynamic approach combines bothGoffman's social approach and Brown and Levinson's cognitive explanation in thesense that “what an individual develops as his/her continual construction ofself depends on social interaction, and social interaction takes place betweenindividuals” (p. 318). In presenting his model of impoliteness and his analysisof 'impoliteness as entertainment' in a quiz show, Jonathan Culpeper, in''Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link''employs and develops some notions from the previous papers, e.g. Goffman'sdistinction between intentional, accidental and incidental face threat, andBrown and Levinson's politeness strategies.

Section 7, “Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics”, starts with ShoshanaBlum-Kulka, Juliane House and Gabriele Kasper’s reading which was originally theintroduction of their book entitled “Cross-cultural pragmatics: requests andapologies”. The book represents the findings of the Cross-Cultural Speech ActRealization Project (CCSARP), which is regarded as “the most carefullyconceived, comprehensive study in cross-cultural pragmatics” (p. 341). Theselected reading introduces the instrument of measurement, population,procedure, data analysis and the primary features coded for requests andapologies. Centering on the indexical function of language, Haruko MinegishiCook, in ''Why can't learners of JFL distinguish polite from impolite speechstyles?'', examines how students of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL)interpret and use contextualization cues and their pragmatic competence todistinguish polite from impolite speech styles. The study indicates that “inorder to understand the pragmatic meaning of a speech style, JFL students needto know a wider range of co-occurring linguistic forms and their pragmaticfunctions which constitute various speech registers as well as their specificcultural norms of interpretation” (p. 369), hence the complexities involved inexplicit instruction of contextualization cues. The last reading, ''Interculturalpragmatics'', is a new paper by Istvan Kecskes who elaborates his socio-cognitiveapproach (SCA) for the study of intercultural pragmatics. According to thisapproach, interculturality is defined as “a situationally emergent andco-constructed phenomenon that relies both on relatively definable culturalnorms and models as well as situationally evolving features” (p. 376). SCAsynthesizes a number of contrasting but interactive concepts such associal/individual, intention/attention, cooperation/egocentrism,relevance/salience, and private experience/actual situational experience. Theauthor also contrasts intercultural pragmatics and other paradigms in pragmatics.

To reflect the achievements of pragmatics prioritizing spoken interaction,Section 8, ''Pragmatics and conversation -- development and impairment'', isdevoted to developmental pragmatic and clinical pragmatic research whichoverlaps with ethnomethodological studies. Anat Ninio and Catherine Snow's bookextract, ''Children as Conversationalists'' presents their conversation-analysis(CA)-based exploration of children's development of conversation skills such asturn-taking and turn-management skills, and children's handling of repairsequences used by their caregivers. Also drawing upon insights from CA, EmanuelSchegloff examines video data related to patients with disabled communicationbetween the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Contrary to the thenaccepted view regarding the problems such patients face like the handling ofturn-taking, commands and requests, or politeness, Schegloff's minute andholistic analysis reveals that the patients' evidence for communicative behavioris to be found in their nonverbal bodily actions. Schegloff's study stresses theadvantage of the CA-based approach over laboratory testing in capturingpatients' conversational behavior. Also emphasizing the importance ofconcentrating on naturally-occurring patient-partner interactions, HeidiHamilton adopts an interactional sociolinguistic approach to investigate thecommunication competence of an Alzheimer's patient named Elsie. It is pointedout that researcher's intervention can affect their conclusion.

The three readings in section 9, “Pragmaticians on Pragmatics”, represent thearguments and approaches of the Chicago School, which, instead of reducingpragmatics to the study of propositional meaning by a rational agent, argue forscrutinizing language use in a broader sociocultural context. The main part ofRoman Kopytko's paper, ''Against rationalistic pragmatics” is his critique of theassumptions and methodologies of rationalistic pragmatics (RP). Drawing oninsights from philosophy, linguistics, sociology and social psychology, hecritically analyses the inadequacies of RP in terms of 'rationality','reductionism', and 'context'. He proposes that the theoretical foundations of aunified view of empirical pragmatics should be based on features like: “(1)non-modular, (2) non-essentialist, (3) non-categorical, (4) non-deterministic inits view of pragmatics, (5) contextual, (6) non-reductionist in its approach topragmatics” (p. 449). Jon F. Pressman, in ''Pragmatics in the late twentiethcentury countering recent historiographic neglect'', outlines the ideas ofJakobson, Silverstein, and two of Silverstein's students -- Charles Briggs andGreg Urban, and stresses the need for linguistic pragmaticians to integrateinsights from an ethnolinguistic approach to pragmatics. Questioning thewidely-adopted practice in pragmatics that seeks abstract and general rulesgoverning 'ordinary' and 'everyday' conversation, Charles L. Briggs, in ''Fromthe ideal, the ordinary, and the orderly to conflict and violence in pragmaticresearch'', shifts the focus to 'extraordinary' discourse of conflict andviolence and methods truly free of preconceived analytical frames.

The Reader is rounded off by the editors' discussion on theory and practice inpragmatics. This section provides snapshots of three applied pragmaticdisciplines -- developmental pragmatics, which concerns how language-intactchildren develop their pragmatic competence; clinical pragmatics, which studiesdisruptive aspects of communication of individuals who are normal or havecerebral injury or pathology; and experimental pragmatics, which utilizeslaboratory experiments to test the assumptions made in theoretical pragmatics.A&G also elaborate on how theoretical pragmatics and applied pragmaticdisciplines can feed into each other.

EVALUATION

Pragmatics is growing far beyond its origins in analytic philosophy to encompassareas which have been studied by a number of disciplines like cognitivepsychology, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, etc. Twoschools of thought have been identified in contemporary pragmatics: theAnglo-American school, also known as “the component view” of pragmatics, whichtreats pragmatics as a core component of a theory of language and containstopics such as deixis, speech acts, implicature, presupposition and so forth;and the Europe Continental School, which adopts “the perspective view” ofpragmatics, taking it as presenting a functional (social, cognitive andcultural) perspective on every aspect of language use (see Huang, 2009:4). “ThePragmatics Reader” attempts to make a balanced representation of both schoolswhen selecting and arranging the topics, so it is more comprehensive than thosewhich represent only one (e.g. Horn and Ward 2006). In order to make thereadings more coherent in the collection, the editors add a diachronic dimensionto them and organize them in the order 'philosophical, cognitive, andsociocultural', and this order can even be reflected in one section (e.g.section 5). The coherence of the collection is also captured by how differentapproaches adopt an increasingly broad (as reflected in the sequentialorganization of the book) treatment of 'context' and 'meaning', two core issuesin defining pragmatics. This unique arrangement distinguishes this book fromother collections which are either just thematically grouped (Davis 1991; Kasher1998) or alphabetically sequenced (Mey 2010; Cummings 2010). Finally, thecoherence of the collection is shown by numerous cross-references and theinterrelatedness mentioned in the sectional introductions (e.g. pp. 12 and 14).

Another distinctive feature of this book is that, unlike other pragmaticsreaders (e.g. Davis 1991) or collections (e.g. Kasher 1998), it shows theeditors' unique trimming and guiding to make it highly pedagogical, engaging andselectively focused. Firstly, it is very suitable for both self-study uses andinstructional purposes. Each section begins with a sectional introductiondesigned to help readers contextualize the papers in that section and ends withan annotated list of further readings. Moreover, each reading follows the sameformat: they are preceded by a pre-reading activity, contain an in-readingactivity and are followed by a post-reading activity. The pre-readings are meantto set the users thinking in the right direction (so that the reader would knowwhat kinds of issues need to be resolved); the in-reading activities aredesigned to guide and assist the reader to gain a deeper understanding (so whenreading the user can have a specific purpose); and finally the post-readingactivities are intended to provide important food for thought (so users couldfind their own point of departure). Second, compared with Kasher's six-volumecollection, this reader is more condensed and focused in that A&G select frompublished papers or monographs only the most representative parts which fit theoverall 'philosophical, social and cultural' order.

It must be clarified that the editors' 'interventions' in the readings do notlimit the reader's own thinking or channel the reader into some biased views.Rather they are playing an assisting role in one way or another. For instance,some in-reading activities provide a photograph (e.g. p. 119) to help the readergrasp the key points of the reading; and many others just highlight some keypoints with a marginal mark to provoke the reader into critical thinking in anopen way.

Because most of the chapters are selected from whole books or complete articles,collections like the present one might run the risk of losing the completenessof the original publication. The editors successfully avoided this by not onlyoffering a highly accessible background-providing introduction at the beginningof each section but also including selections which specifically review thedevelopment and state-of-the-art research in the related area (e.g. Blakemoreand Clark's survey of relevance theory in section 3).

There are also some very minor bugs related to typos. For example, on p. 208,'arc' appears in lieu of 'are'. In addition, the full form of some acronyms ofspecial terms are not written in full at first mention (e.g. on p. 91, GCI means'Generalized Conversational Implicature'; on p. 92, PCI means 'ParticularConversational Implicature'), the reason being that the part of text containingtheir precedents are not included in the reader. Moreover, one scholar’s name ismisspelt, i.e. Elizabeth Closs Traugott, the author of the first reading insection 5, is misspelt as Elizabeth Close Traugott. However, the above does notdetract from the book's coherence and readability.

The volume only mentions applied disciplines like developmental pragmatics,clinical pragmatics and experimental pragmatics in passing when discussingtheory and practice in the last section. Future editions may be expanded toinclude more readings in more fields as is acknowledged by A&G.

Overall, this reader provides students and researchers alike with access to theprimary literature. It both serves as an accessible introduction to pragmatics,and forms an important reference work which charts the evolution and range ofresearch in pragmatics. It can be used as a core text in undergraduate orgraduate level courses on pragmatics, or as a resource by interested scholarsand lay readers who would like to gain a better understanding of the pragmaticsenterprise.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
Fan Zhen-qiang is a lecturer in linguistics at Zhejiang Gongshang
University in Hangzhou, China. He obtained his doctoral degree in the
Center for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, China.
In 2008, he was a visiting PhD at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics
(Uil-Ots), Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His research interests lie
in the areas of pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and discourse analysis.