Intercultural Pragmatics

Intercultural Pragmatics studies how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language. The field first emerged in the early 21st century, joining two seemingly antagonistic approaches to pragmatics research: the cognitive-philosophical approach, which considers intention as an a priori mental state of the speaker, and the sociocultural-interactional approach, which considers it as a post factum construct created by both speaker and hearer though conversation. Istvan Kecskes, an early proponent of intercultural pragmatics, was among the first to propose merging the two to form the socio-cognitive approach now core to the field. In Intercultural Pragmatics, the first book on the subject, Kecskes establishes the foundations of the field, boldly combining the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication. He argues that people cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context. At the same time, however, because of their egocentrism they activate the most salient information to their attention in the construction and comprehension of utterances. Within this approach, interlocutors are considered as social beings searching for meaning with individual minds embedded in a socio-cultural collectivity, and intention is a cooperation-directed practice that is governed by relevance which depends on actual situational experience. Intercultural pragmatics is a rapidly-growing field, and the only subfield of pragmatics to incorporate features of intercultural interaction into mainstream pragmatics. This volume offers both a valuable synthesis of current research and a new way to think about pragmatics. I think that his [Kecske's] concern for linguistics as part of the humanities has to be heavily applauded. This is an important book no one can deny this. Furthermore, I suspect this book is only the tip of the iceberg. This book stimulates more to come Alessandro Capone, University of Messina, Australian journal of Linguistics I am convinced that Kecskes' volume is likely to become a classic in pragmatics, due to both its respectful debate with traditional theories, and also its exploration of innovative niches of research in language, culture, and society. Jesus Romero-Trillo, Applied Linguistics this book makes a substantial contribution in a rapidly developing area. It provides many perceptive insights and discussions that readers of Language and Dialogue will appreciate, and Kecskes makes a convincing case for the contribution of current pragmatic theories to debates in areas such as the theorization of (im)politeness. Janet Holmes, Language and DialogueIntroduction ; 1. Current pragmatic theories ; 2. The socio-cognitive approach ; 3. Pragmatic competence ; 4. Encyclopaedic knowledge, cultural models, interculturality ; 5. Formulaic language use ; 6. Context ; 7. Common ground ; 8. Salience ; 9. Politeness and impoliteness ; 10. Methods of analysis ; Epilogue