Pragmatics: Critical Concepts

This timely collection, for the first time together in one place, gives students and researchers access to the major works of the history of pragmatics and the science of language use. Readers can now critically assess the subject matter, methods, theories and applications that have shaped this exciting area of language study.

These important volumes portray the development of pragmatics as a science of language use. The whole spectrum of relevant areas, from theoretical linguistics and philosophy, through psychology and sociology, to neuroscience, speech rehabilitation and computer science is represented.

Issues explored include:

* presupposition

* implicature

* discourse

* grammar

* communication

* indexicals

* psychology

* sociology.

This work also provides highly useful references and suggestions for additional papers to be consulted, and has an exceptionally detailed subject and name index to enable easy and immediate access for the reader.