Pragmatics

Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics

by Yan Huang

Yan Huang's highly successful textbook on pragmatics - the study of language in use - has been fully revised and updated in this second edition. It includes a brand new chapter on reference, a major topic in both linguistics and the philosophy of language. Chapters have also been updated to include new material on upward and downward entailment, current debates about conversational implicature, impoliteness, emotional deixis, contextualism versus semantic minimalism, and the elimination of binding conditions.

The book draws on data from English and a wide range of the world's languages, and shows how pragmatics is related to the study of semantics, syntax, and sociolinguistics and to such fields as the philosophy of language, linguistic anthropology, and artificial intelligence. Professor Huang includes exercises and essay topics at the end of each chapter, and offers guidance and suggested solutions at the end of the volume. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, this new edition will continue to be an ideal textbook for students of linguistics, and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and computer science.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language

400 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Shaimaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very clearly written introductory textbook. It comes with exercises at the end of each chapter for practice as well!

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a very helpful book because nobody agrees on what anything is in this field. But as far as introductions go, it’s an honorable attempt at doing the impossible