Introduction to Pragmatics guides students through traditional and new approaches in the field, focusing particularly on phenomena at the elusive semantics/pragmatics boundary to explore the role of context in linguistic communication.

• Offers students an accessible introduction and an up-to-date survey of the field, encompassing both established and new approaches to pragmatics
• Addresses the traditional range of topics - such as implicature, reference, presupposition, and speech acts - as well as newer areas of research, including neo-Gricean theories, Relevance
• Theory, information structure, inference, and dynamic approaches to meaning
• Explores the relationship and boundaries between semantics and pragmatics
• Ideal for students coming to pragmatics for the first time

About the Author
Betty J. Birner is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of several books, including The Discourse Function of Inversion in English (1996), Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English (with Gregory Ward, 1998), and Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn (with Gregory Ward, 2006).

Reviews

"Birner has made an impressive attempt at simplifying the field of pragmatics and connecting it with real-life situations, unprecedentedly foregrounding its great potential in coming to terms with social issues. Thus, the value of Introduction to Pragmatics goes beyond the audience-borders set by the author and the publisher. All pragmaticians, applied linguists, stylisticians, sociolinguists and other scholars who are interested in the way language behaves in society should find the book an asset." (Discourse Studies, 13 May 2015)

"Birner's Introduction to Pragmatics offers graduate students and upper-level undergraduates an accessible introduction that addresses the traditional range of topics within pragmatics through real-life examples." (The Modern Language Journal, 10 November 2014)

"...this book achieves success and relevancy in ways where other texts fall short." (The LINGUIST List, 9 July 2013)

Book Information
ISBN 9781405175838
Author Betty J. Birner
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 239mm * 170mm * 18mm