Studies In The Pragmatics Of Discourse

Studies in the Pragmatics of Discourse Janua Linguarum. Series Maior.

Discourse is language as it occurs, in any form or context, beyond the speech act. It may be written or spoken, monological or dialogical, but there is always a communicative aim or purpose. The present volume provides systematic orientation in the vast field of studying discourse from a pragmatic perspective. It first gives an overview of a range of approaches developed for the analysis of discourse, including, among others, conversation analysis, systemic-functional analysis, genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus-driven approaches and multimodal analysis. The focus is furthermore on functional units in discourse, such as discourse markers, moves, speech act sequences, discourse phases and silence. The final section of the volume examines discourse types and domains, providing a taxonomy of discourse types and focusing on a range of discourse domains, e.g. classroom discourse, medical discourse, legal discourse, electronic discourse. Each article surveys the current state of the art of the respective topic area while also presenting new research findings.

Public discourse constitutes the language environment of a town or a city, which forms part of the social environment of a country or a region. Based on extensive first-hand data collected from public places, mass media and the Internet, this monograph attempts critical pragmatic studies of public discourse in the contemporary Chinese context. By applying pragmatic theories and analytical instruments to the analysis of the data, including business names, advertisements, public signs and notices, and news, the book showcases such discursive practices as personalization and subjectivization and reveals such social problems as unhealthy social mentalities, “pragmatic traps”, suspect discrimination, and vulgarity. It exemplifies a way of combining the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach and the pragmatic approach with a clear focus on the pragmatic issues. This book will not only be a necessary addition to the academic discipline of pragmatics in general, and critical pragmatics in particular, but also lay bare the problems existing in the use of public discourse and suggest several ways to improve such use. While it addresses the Chinese data only, the proposed analyses may contribute to international readers’ understanding of public discourse in contemporary China and serve as a reference for similar researches worldwide.

Pragmatics and Discourse, 2nd edition: has been revised and reorganised to place more emphasis on pragmatics covers the core areas of the subject: context and co-text, Speech Act Theory, Conversation Analysis, Exchange Structure, Interactional Sociolinguistics, the Cooperative Principle, Politeness Theory and extends to more applied areas: Corpus Linguistics & Communities of Practice, and Intercultural Pragmatics, Interlanguage Pragmatics & language learning draws on a wealth of texts: from Bend it Like Beckham and The Motorcycle Diaries to political speeches, newspaper extracts and blogs. provides classic readings from the key names in the discipline, from Sperber and Wilson to Fairclough, Wodak and Gumperz is accompanied by a supporting website Key features of the new edition include: two new strands on Corpora & Communities and Culture & Language Learning; the merging of two strands on Context and Co-text; new material from speaker-based cognitive linguistics; updated references; and fresh examples and exercises. Written by an experienced teacher and author, this accessible textbook is an essential resource for all students of English language and linguistics.

Discourse Studies is an interdisciplinary field studying the social production of meaning across the entire spectrum of the social sciences and humanities. The Discourse Studies Reader brings together 40 key readings from discourse researchers in Europe and North America, some of which are now translated into English for the first time. Divided into seven sections – ‘Theoretical Inspirations: Structuralism versus Pragmatics’, ‘From Structuralism to Poststructuralism’, ‘Enunciative Pragmatics’, ‘Interactionism’, ‘Sociopragmatics’, ‘Historical Knowledge’ and ‘Critical Approaches’ – The Discourse Studies Reader offers a comprehensive overview of the main currents in discourse studies, both discourse theory and discourse analysis. With short introductions elaborating the broader context, the sections present key selections from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds by placing them into their respective epistemological traditions. The Discourse Studies Reader is an indispensable textbook for students and scholars alike who are interested in discourse theoretical questions and working with discourse analytical methods.

In the current discourse in pragmatics, multi-perspective methods are seen as the best way to understand language use in context. Within this discussion, the volume adopts diverse approaches to pragmatics, and focuses on comparing a wide selection of languages, including English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish. The contributions deal with grammatical expressions, prosody, textual genres and speech acts, which occur in different social interactions and in multicultural environments, including foreign language learning and lingua franca situations. Each topic is analysed by comparing its usage in at least two different languages or by contrasting the linguistic behaviour of different groups of language users.

This new edition of Introduction to Discourse Studies (IDS) is a thoroughly revised and updated version of this successful textbook, which has been published in four languages and has become a must-read for anyone interested in the analysis of texts and discourses. Supported by an international advisory board of 14 leading experts, it deals with all main subdomains in discourse studies, from pragmatics to cognitive linguistics, from critical discourse analysis to stylistics, and many more. The book approaches major issues in this field from the Anglo-American and European as well as the Asian traditions. It provides an ‘academic toolkit’ for future courses on discourse studies and serves as a stepping stone to the independent study of professional literature. The chapters are subdivided in modular sections that can be studied separately. The pedagogical objectives are further supported by over 500 index entries covering frequently used concepts that are accurately defined with examples throughout the text; more than 150 test-yourself questions, all elaborately answered, which are ideal for self-study; nearly 100 assignments that provide ample material for lecturers to focus on specific topics in their courses. Jan Renkema is Emeritus Professor of Discourse Quality at the Department of Communication and Information Sciences at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. He is also editor of Discourse, of Course (2009) and author of The Texture of Discourse (2009). In 2009, a Chinese edition of Introduction to Discourse Studies was published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. Christoph Schubert is Full Professor of English Linguistics at Vechta University, Germany. He is author of an Introduction to English text linguistics (2nd ed. 2012) and co-editor of Pragmatic Perspectives on Postcolonial Discourse (2016) and Variational Text Linguistics (2016).