Introduction to Pragmatics

Introduction to Pragmatics guides students through traditional and new approaches in the field, focusing particularly on phenomena at the elusive semantics/pragmatics boundary to explore the role of context in linguistic communication. Offers students an accessible introduction and an up-to-date survey of the field, encompassing both established and new approaches to pragmatics. Addresses the traditional range of topics - such as implicature, reference, presupposition, and speech acts - as well as newer areas of research, including neo-Gricean theories, RelevanceTheory, information structure, inference, and dynamic approaches to meaning. Explores the relationship and boundaries between semantics and pragmatics. Ideal for students coming to pragmatics for the first time.