Fresh Perspectives on Major Issues in Pragmatics

This book showcases new and innovative developments and approaches in pragmatics, spotlighting perspectives from an international range of emerging scholars undertaking cutting-edge research pushing the field in new directions. The volume begins by taking stock of the most up-to-date developments in pragmatics research, as embodied by the work of a newer generation of pragmaticists. Chapters are organized around key areas of development within pragmatics, including intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics, cognitive pragmatics, and new perspectives on referencing, implicating, and inferring, shedding further light on the ways in which pragmatics increasingly interfaces with other linguistic disciplines and on innovative methodologies. The book also places the focus on pragmatics approaches in languages other than than English, further expanding the borders of research. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in pragmatics interested in staying on top of the latest developments and future directions for the field.

Monika Kirner-Ludwig is Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck, Austria, and is affiliated with the University at Albany (SUNY), USA, and Tomsk State University, Russia.

Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction: New Waves in Pragmatics Istvan Kecskes and Monika Kirner-Ludwig Chapter 2. Can cats pick up chainsaws? The interaction of context and plausibility Stanley Alexander Donahoo Chapter 3. Scalar Implicature through the lens of Distributional Linguistics Maxime Codère Corbeil Chapter 4. "We have a big crowd": The different referents of the first-person plural in U.S. presidential candidates' talk on entertainment-political interviews Eean Grimshaw and Menno H. Reijven Chapter 5. Whatever can be meant can be echoed: A comparison of since when questions and echo declarative questions Angelika Kiss Chapter 6. The pragmatics of Japanese quotative constructions: a comparative study between Japanese and Japanese heritage language families Kiyono Fujinaga-Gordon Chapter 7. Managing epistemic asymmetry through dialogic resonance in therapy interactions Rong Lei Chapter 8. At-issue or not-at-issue discourse contribution by puisque ('since')? Information structure and discourse structure Hasmik Jivanyan Chapter 9. A Discourse Model for "Undirected Speculation" Erika Bellingham, Hanno Beck and Richard Hatcher Chapter 10. Pragmatic aspects of translation: a contrastive analysis of translation processes illustrated by inductive-empirical eye-tracking, writing process analysis, and a questionnaire KyeongHwa Lee