This topic

This Topic does not undertake the considerable project of describing the pragmatics of a particular English. Instead, it is a pragmatics Topic that is oriented towards a pragmatics of Englishes. As a pragmatics Topic, it covers an array of typical pragmatic topics, varying from the more formal to the more socio-cultural. In order, we focus on referring expressions, information structure, pragmatic meaning (including conversational implicature), pragmatic acts (including speech acts), interpersonal pragmatics (including politeness) and metapragmatics. The keystone of our vision of pragmatics for this Topic is integration. The locus of integrating different perspectives in pragmatics is interaction. This Topic works towards a focus on the dynamics of pragmatic interaction. To an extent, we are taking the road carved out by Jenny Thomas in her book Meaning in Interaction (1995), though that book does not have the broad scope of ours or pursue interactional aspects to the same extent. We could also point to the work of Herbert Clark (e.g. 1996) and its influence in shaping approaches to interactional pragmatics. In our view, interaction is where pragmatic phenomena happen and so deserves special attention. With respect to theory, repeatedly in this Topic we describe the dynamic tension between what might be broadly called first-order and second-order perspectives on pragmatics. A first-order perspective is that of the participants themselves, the ones who are using language to mean and do things. A second-order perspective is that of the analyst, including ourselves, the writers of this Topic, and you the readers. Pragmatics, especially of the narrow Anglo-American kind, was traditionally rooted primarily in a second-order perspective, but has more recently seen a shift towards a first-order perspective, driven in part by pragmatics of the broad European kind. In tune with what we stated, we advocate neither perspective exclusively, but seek a middle ground. In other words, we advocate an approach to theorizing in pragmatics that not only respects both user and observer perspectives (or at least attempts to), but also bridges them (or at least attempts to). A particular characteristic of our approach is that it is strongly empirical; it informs and is informed by engagement with the data. To give it a label, we refer to this approach as integrative pragmatics.

As an English language book, our Topic does not attempt to be a systematic description of any particular English, but rather to show how pragmatic phenomena and concepts can be related to various Englishes. A major function of our Reflection boxes is to describe pragmatic variation in English (sometimes characteristics that are shared across a number of Englishes, sometimes specific to a particular English). Reflection boxes are also used to extend particular topics, to add theoretical detail, to describe a specific related phenomenon, and so on. In some ways, one might describe our Topic as a pragmatics Topic that is knowingly ethnocentric. In this respect we should note the 2009 special issue (vol. 41) of the Journal of Pragmatics entitled “Towards an Emancipatory Pragmatics”. In the introduction to the special issue, the editors state (Hanks et al. 2007: 1–2):

It is our shared conviction that pragmatics as an analytic enterprise has been dominated by views of language derived from Euro-American languages and ways of speaking. Speech acts defined in terms of standard illocutionary forces and felicity conditions, implicatures explained on the basis of the Gricean cooperative principle and maxims, politeness defined in terms of a universal notion of “face”, and the very idea that speech is driven by the exchange of information are all examples of the problem. While these research traditions have enriched the field of pragmatics, they also have tended to rely uncritically on the common sense of speakers of modern Western languages, with the attendant premises of individualism, rationality, and market economy. That is, while they are presented as general models of rational language use, they in fact rely heavily on the native common sense of their authors and practitioners.

Unlike most introductory pragmatics books which give the impression that the pragmatic phenomena they discuss are general, applicable to many languages and cultures, we call a spade a spade – this is a topic about pragmatics and the English language.