Pragmatics today

The aim of the present volume is to provide the reader with a specimen of the massive and multifaceted research in linguistic pragmatics, as pursued worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century. The book offers a selection of methodological, interpretative and descriptive papers which form a continuum governed by a group of controlling factors: first, the amount of novel theoretical ingredient, second, the degree of interdisciplinarity, and third, the range of application. Accordingly, the volume proceeds from methodological accounts which propose non-standard, often cross-disciplinary reformulations of the existing apparatus of pragmatics, to critical manifestations of the application of broadly accepted and utilized theories. As the collection unfolds, the latter are first applied to the analysis of discourse genres and sub-genres, and later to the study of individual lexicogrammatical phenomena. Throughout the book, language examples draw on an extensive variety of discourses, from political oratory to children’s language.