Pragmatics

Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics

by Stephen C. Levinson

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. This textbook provides a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic approach can resolve some of the problems semantics have been confronting and simplifying semantic analyses. The exposition is always clear and supported by helpful exemplification. The detailed analyses of selected topics give the student a clear view of the empirical rigour demanded by the study of linguistic pragmatics, but Dr Levinson never loses sight of the rich diversity of the subject. An introduction and conclusion relate pragmatics to other fields in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language usage - psychology, philosophy, anthropology and literature.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Reference, Textbooks

420 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Dusan]

Much of the book I read (the parts requisite for my university course) went *whoosh* over my head. I suppose it's because my brain isn't calibrated to formal-logic thinking (i.e. I am dumb). The bits I did understand, though, were amusing and a great deal more informative, understandable and illustrated than Reyes' El abecé... That said, I have to ask: what *is* the point of pragmatics? Outside of theoretical considerations, I mean.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was probably absolutely amazing when it came out - 37 years ago. It focuses on the tedious issues of the (then) field and, because of that, makes itself irrelevant 2 score later. It's great for covering some interesting information but you can get better, and quicker, elsewhere. The 53 page introductory chapter is dedicated to the definition and scope of pragmatics, which he never lands on, and painfully invalidates every possible definition before landing on "maybe everything outside of semantics - but this means we need to properly define semantics and that's difficult so maybe semantics is truth conditionals?"

I found myself dreading picking it up. It is written only for someone with at least a bachelors in linguistics from a good school that would hit semantics hard. I can't imagine ever recommending this book to someone when deixis, presupposition, implicature, and conversation analysis is covered elsewhere better - for the latter two, I'd suggest Thomas Holtgraves's "Language as Social Action."

That being said, Levinson is an absolute behemoth. He's a pioneer in politeness theory, has pushed the knowledge of pragmatics, and has for deeeecades. He wrote this book around the time he was my age and I absolutely hate him for it. He's a filthy, filthy genius.

But this book is still terrible in 2020.

[Stephen Politzer-Ahles · Rating 4 out of 5]

While many of the specific theories discussed here are outdated (and Levinson's own proposal about default GCIs -- developed in his later work -- has become every experimental pragmaticist's favorite thing to criticize, for good reason), this book is still a treasure and a great example of how to do and think about pragmatics. It's too difficult to be useful as an introductory textbook, but it's good for anyone who's already learned intro pragmatics and semantics and now wants to go deeper. Rather than giving a broad overview of the field, Levinson takes a few important phenomena and then goes into painstaking detail discussing and criticizing what were, at that time, the dominant theories in the field. Even though many of those theories are deprecated now, seeing the logic behind the criticism is really useful, because pragmatics is ultimately more about criticizing claims than just knowing the theories -- every theory or concept you learn about in an intro pragmatics book also has its fair share of people who don't believe it at all, and this book is a great way to get a feel for how to think critically about these issues. It's an excellent resource for relatively advanced linguistics students [who already have some intro pragmatics and semantics background] and for researchers who have some experience with the more famous pragmatics topics (like scalar implicatures) but who want to learn about other pragmatic phenomena and learn more about the theoretical issues. People should read it with a critical eye towards the particular proposals (e.g., I'm still not convinced that "clausal implicatures" are really a thing) but an appreciation for the general approach.

[Borislav Gueorguiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best textbook in linguistic pragmatics.

[YOAN YANG · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book will help me to guide when i am doing my research.

[Defi Rain]

it is ok