This collection of papers embodies the dynamism and diversity of the field of pragmatics. Its authors represent ten different countries and exemplify research across all aspects of pragmatics, along with the interrelations between pragmatics proper and such neighboring disciplines as cognitive psychology, philosophy of language, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and communication. Recent theoretical and empirical advances in these fields has motivated scholars to reexamine and revise some of the central tenets of pragmatics, and it is this reexamination which lies at the heart of the papers in this volume.
István Kecskés was a Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, USA. He taught graduate courses in pragmatics, second language acquisition and bilingualism at SUNY, Albany. He was the President of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) and the CASLAR (Chinese as a Second Language Research) Association. He was the founder and co-director of the Barcelona Summer School on Bi- and Multilingualism (until 2016), and the founder and co-director of Sorbonne, Paris – SUNY, Albany Graduate Student Symposium.