Gunter Senft - Understanding Pragmatics

This is easily the most useful, and engaging introduction to pragmatics that is currently available. Senft discusses the canonical topics of the discipline but he discusses them, always in an exemplary and rigorous manner, against their wider intellectual backgrounds. This combination of sympathetic, critical and illuminating exposition of the central topics and their relationships makes this book a terrific companion for all undergraduate and postgraduate students (and some of their teachers too).

Ken Turner, University of Brighton, UK

Gunter Senft's Understanding Pragmatics is highly systematic and orderly, with a new principled approach to the major themes of pragmatics and the central topics that have paraded under that banner. Arrayed against the familiar texts in the field, the book is more heavily grounded in anthropological fieldwork and splendidly provided with suggested and potentially thought-provoking exercises for ambitious students at all levels. I am eager to try it out with some of my own.

John Haviland, University of California, San Diego, USA

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 that 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.

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

Understanding Language series

Series Editors:

Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Greville Corbett, Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, UK

The Understanding Language series provides approachable, yet authoritative, introductions to major topics in linguistics. Ideal for students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, each book carefully explains the basics, emphasizing understanding of the essential notions rather than arguing for a particular theoretical position.

Other titles in the series:

Understanding Language Testing
Dan Douglas

Understanding Morphology, Second Edition
Martin Haspelmath
Andrea D. Sims

Understanding Phonetics
Patricia Ashby

Understanding Phonology, Third Edition
Carlos Gussenhoven
Haike Jacobs

Understanding Second Language Learning
Lourdes Ortega

Understanding Syntax, Third Edition
Maggie Tallerman

Understanding Semantics, Second Edition
Sebastian Lbner

Understanding Child Language Acquisition
Caroline Rowland

For more information on any of these titles, or to order, go to www.routledge.com/linguistics

Understanding
Pragmatics

Gunter Senft

First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Gunter Senft

The right of Gunter Senft to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Senft, Gunter, 1952
Understanding pragmatics : an interdisciplinary approach to language use / Gunter Senft.
pages cm. -- (Understanding Language Series)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Pragmatics. 2. Linguistics. I. Title.
P99.4.P72S48 2014 401'.45--dc23
2013027996

ISBN: 978-0-415-84056-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4441-8030-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-77647-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion Pro
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

Note that the glosses in some of the examples quoted were changed (following the Leipzig Glossing Rules as closely as possible) for the sake of standardization.