Pragmatics: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to the study of verbal and nonverbal communication in context. Including nine chapters on the history of pragmatics, current theories, the application of pragmatics, and possible future developments in the field, this book: Offers a comprehensive overview of key ideas in contemporary pragmatics and how these have developed from and beyond the pioneering work of the philosopher Paul Grice; Draws on real-world examples such as political campaign posters and song lyrics to demonstrate how we convey and understand direct and indirect meanings; Explains the effects of verbal, nonverbal, and multimodal communication and how the same words or behaviour can mean different things in different contexts, including what makes utterances more or less polite; Highlights key terms and concepts throughout and provides chapter-end study questions, further reading suggestions, and a glossary. Written by an experienced researcher and teacher, this book will be an essential introduction to this topic for all beginning students of English Language and Linguistics.

This book provides a clear and engaging description of group dynamic processes. Vignettes, case examples, and activities provide an experiential flavor to the book that will deepen the reader’s understanding of key concepts. Activities are also useful experiential teaching and learning tools for studying group dynamics and allow participants to engage in the group dynamic process itself. Another attractive feature of the book is a series of reflections by an individual who participated in an intensive two-weekend group experience. She shares her thoughts on the group’s progression through various stages of change and reflects upon its impact on her personal growth. Group Dynamics: Basics and Pragmatics for Practitioners will serve as an important text for students and professors and as a valuable guide for those who facilitate groups in a variety of clinical, counseling, educational, research, and organizational settings.

What makes human language unique? Do women speak differently from men? Just what is the meaning of "meaning"? Language: The Basics provides a concise introduction to the study of language. Written in an engaging and entertaining style, it encourages the reader to think about the way language works. It features: * chapters on 'Language in Use', 'Attitudes to Language', 'Children and Language' and 'Language, Mind and Brain' * a section on sign language * a glossary of key terms * handy annotated guides to further reading. Providing an accessible overview of a fascinating subject, this is an essential book for all students and anyone who's ever been accused of splitting an infinitive.

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, Relevance Theory, 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

First published in 2000, this book is about sentences containing the word or, dealing primarily with sentences in which or conjoins clauses, but also some cases in which it conjoins expressions of other categories. The author aims to give an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction, and to use this account in explaining the behaviour of presupposition projection and of anaphora in disjunctive sentences. The author begins by giving an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction before turning to the presupposition projection problem. The final two chapters discuss anaphora and its interactions with disjunction.

This book provides an engaging introduction to cross-cultural pragmatics. It is essential reading for both academics and students in pragmatics, applied linguistics, language teaching and translation studies. It offers a corpus-based and empirically-derived framework which allows language use to be systematically contrasted across linguacultures.

The study of questions and answers is challenging for various fields of theoretical linguistics, logic, analytical philosophy, and more recently computer science. Research into questions and answers addresses old and raises new and important questions about the semantics / pragmatics interface and about the dynamics of interpretation. This book brings together current work on the topic as it has been developed in Amsterdam, and congenial academic sites, over the past 15 years. Amsterdam is one of the breeding grounds for the formal study of logic and language, for dynamic semantics, and for the study of questions and answers. It covers the major issues of pragmatic/semantic investigation, including logical relations, context dependence, information structure, and more. It illustrates how semantic/pragmatic stance can be used for problems in other areas of linguistic theorising.

Irrespective of the language (first, second, or foreign) taught, knowledge of linguistics and its application is a must for language teachers. However, most TESOL programs use general linguistics textbooks that deal with the science of linguistics (as theory), disregarding its implications (practice) for teaching English language learners. Applied Linguistics for Teachers of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners is an essential scholarly publication that seeks to contribute to TESOL and language teacher education programs in order to assist educators to apply their knowledge to help linguistically and culturally diverse learners succeed in school and life. Highlighting an array of topics such as bilingualism, morphology, and sociolinguistics, this book is ideal for educators, educational programs, professionals, academicians, professors, linguists, and students.

A new and exciting introduction to linguistics, this textbook presents language in all its amazing complexity, while guiding students gently through the basics. Students emerge with an appreciation of the diversity of the world's languages, as well as a deeper understanding of the structure of human language, the ways it is used, and its broader social and cultural context. Chapters introducing the nuts and bolts of language study (phonology, syntax, meaning) are combined with those on the 'functions' of language (discourse, prosody, pragmatics, and language contact), helping students gain a better grasp of how language works in the real world. A rich set of language 'profiles' help students explore the world's linguistic diversity, identify similarities and differences between languages, and encourages them to apply concepts from earlier chapter material. A range of carefully designed pedagogical features encourage student engagement, adopting a step-by-step approach and using study questions and case studies.

Philosophy of Language introduces the student to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language. Topics are structured in three parts in the book. Part I, Reference and Referring Expressions, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Desciptions, Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of proper names, Searle's cluster theory, and the causal-historical theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics, includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys approaches to metaphor. Unique features of the text: * chapter overviews and summaries * clear supportive examples * study questions * annotated further reading * glossary.