Researching Sociopragmatic Variability


Book Description

Researching Sociopragmatic Variability showcases a range of research approaches to the study of speech acts and pragmatic markers across different languages and varieties of a language, investigating native and non-native usages and variation across gender, situation and addressee.




Socio-Pragmatic Variation in Ireland


Book Description

Pragmatics represents the study of language use in socially grounded contexts and it is thus a central discipline in Linguistics. Due to its focus on language use, it has been referred to as a transdiscipline that interacts with a broad variety of disciplines that are concerned with social action and, as such, pragmatics overlaps with many other linguistic and non-linguistic disciplines. Irish English is one of the earliest varieties of English to have attracted the interest of scholars working on pragmatic variation. From a sociolinguistic and a pragmatics perspective, it represents one of the best studied varieties of English and can thus be argued to offer important impulses to the study of variationist pragmatics in general. Ulster Scots, though in close contact with Irish English, has received less attention. Given this important position of Irish English in pragmatics research and the paucity of such research on (Ulster) Scots, this volume explicitly focuses on socio-pragmatics and deals with the way speakers in and around Ireland use language in a way so that it assists them in the construction of their social identities or helps them navigate socio-cultural spaces.




The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics


Book Description

Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study. Bringing together an international team of leading editors and contributors, it provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of the key concepts, topics, settings and methodologies involved in sociopragmatic research. The chapters are organised in a systematic fashion, and span a wide range of theoretical research on how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others, and how it helps construct our social worlds. Providing insight into a fascinating array of phenomena and novel research directions, the Handbook is not only relevant to experts of pragmatics but to any reader with an interest in language and its use in different contexts, including researchers in sociology, anthropology and communication, and students of applied linguistics and related areas, as well as professional practitioners in communication research.




Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics


Book Description

This handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of a wide range of developmental and clinical issues in pragmatics. Principally, the contributions to this volume deal with pragmatic competence in a native language, in a second or foreign language, and in a selection of language disorders. The topics which are covered explore questions of production and comprehension on the utterance and discourse level. Topics addressed concern the acquisition and learning, teaching and testing, assessment and treatment of various aspects of pragmatic ability, knowledge and use. These include, for example, the acquisition and development of speech acts, implicatures, irony, story-telling and interactional competence. Phenomena such as pragmatic awareness and pragmatic transfer are also addressed. The disorders considered include clinical conditions pertaining to children and to adults. Specifically, these are, among others, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, and Alzheimer's disease.




Second Language Acquisition


Book Description

This volume presents a collection of current research on pedagogies, practices and perspectives in the field of second language acquisition. It brings together different aspects of learning, teaching and researching a second language with chapters covering a range of topics from emotional communication, pragmatic competence, transformative pedagogy, inclusion, reflective teaching and innovative research methodologies. The authors address a global audience to offer insights into contemporary theories, research, policies and practices in second language acquisition. This collection of work is aimed at students, teachers and researchers wishing to reflect on current developments and identify potential research directions.




Methods in Pragmatics


Book Description

Methods in Pragmatics provides a systematic overview of the different types of data, the different methods of data collection and data analysis used in pragmatic research. It offers authoritative and comprehensive surveys of the entire breadth of methods and methodologies. Part 1 covers introspectional, philosophical and cognitive pragmatics. Part 2 is devoted to experimental pragmatics, including discourse completion and dialogue construction tasks, role-plays and other production and comprehension tasks. Part 3 reviews observational pragmatics including ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, and part 4, finally, is devoted to corpus pragmatics including accounts of corpus compilation, annotation and data retrieval specific to pragmatic research. Each contribution provides a state-of-the-art account of the precise workings of one particular method, its applications in the relevant research literature as well as a critical assessment of its strengths and weaknesses and the type of pragmatic research questions for which it is most suitable.




The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is a comprehensive critical survey of the field of L2 pragmatics, collecting a number of chapters that highlight the key theories, methods, pedagogies, and research findings throughout its development over the last four decades. Demonstrating the ways in which pragmatics has long served as a lens through which to examine patterns of L2 development, the volume is divided into six parts which reflect the field’s structure and evolution: • Constructs and units of analysis • Theoretical approaches • Methodological approaches • Pedagogical approaches • Contexts and individual considerations • L2 pragmatics in the global era The handbook has a particular focus on covering not only traditional topics in the field, such as constructs of pragmatic competence (e.g., speech acts, implicature), teaching and assessment, and pragmatics learning in a study abroad program, but also emerging areas of study, including interactional pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, usage-based approaches, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Each chapter introduces the topic and follows with a description of its theoretical underpinnings, an overview of existing literature, appraisal of current practice, concluding with a discussion of future directions for research and key readings. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is an essential resource for those with an interest in second language acquisition, pragmatics, and language teaching.




Pragmatics of Space


Book Description

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of spatial configurations of language use and of language use in space. It consists of four parts. The first part covers the various practices of describing space through language, including spatial references in spoken interaction or in written texts, the description of motion events as well as the creation of imaginative spaces in storytelling. The second part surveys aspects of the spatial organization of face-to-face communication including not only spatial arrangements of small groups in interaction but also the spatial dimension of sign language and gestures. The third part is devoted to the communicative resources of constructed spaces and the ways in which these facilitate and shape communication. Part four, finally, is devoted to pragmatics across space and cultures, i.e. the ways in which language use differs across language varieties, languages and cultures.




Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech


Book Description

Featuring contributions from an international team of leading and up-and-coming scholars, this innovative volume provides a comprehensive sociolinguistic picture of current spoken British English based on the Spoken BNC2014, a brand new corpus of British speech. The book begins with short introductions highlighting the state-of-the-art in three major areas of corpus-based sociolinguistics, while the remaining chapters feature rigorous analysis of the research outcomes of the project grounded in Spoken BNC2014 data samples, highlighting English used in everyday situations in the UK, with brief summaries reflecting on the sociolinguistic implications of this research included at the end of each chapter. This unique and robust dataset allows this team of researchers the unique opportunity to focus on speaker characteristics such as gender, age, dialect and socio-economic status, to examine a range of sociolinguistic dimensions, including grammar, pragmatics, and discourse, and to reflect on the major changes that have occurred in British society since the last corpus was compiled in the 1990s. This dynamic new contribution to the burgeoning field of corpus-based sociolinguistics is key reading for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, grammar, and British English.




The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics is the first volume to offer a comprehensive overview of advances in Spanish Pragmatics, addressing different types of interaction and the variables, both social and linguistic, that can affect them. Written by a diverse set of experts in the field, the handbook unifies two major approaches to the study of pragmatics, the Anglo-American and European Continental traditions. Thirty-three chapters cover in detail both pragmatic foundations (e.g. speech act theory, implicature and relevance, deixis) and interfaces with other concepts, including: • Discourse • Variation; Culture and interculture • (Im)politeness; humor • Learning contexts and teaching • Technology This is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers of Spanish language and linguistics.