The volume brings together twenty articles written by established linguists, language philosophers, sociologists and psychologists, sharing their academic interest in a broad and interdisciplinary field of linguistic pragmatics. The collection consists of four thematic parts: “Pragmatics and Cognition,” “The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface,” “Conversational and Text Analysis” and “Pragmatics, Social Research and Didactics.” It aims to contribute to the debate on the present-day status of pragmatics, by examining three fundamental issues. The first involves the question of the current explanatory power of pragmatics, namely, how successful is the existing apparatus of pragmatics and the basic-level parameters (theories of speech acts, relevance, implicature, presupposition, deixis, politeness, etc.) in the elucidation of various aspects of meaning. The second issue involves the methodological assistance that pragmatics might need in order to enhance its explanatory power. The third has to do with the fuzzily defined boundaries of the discipline of pragmatics and the resulting temptation for analysts to concentrate solely on its fragmented sub-domains. As the collection unfolds, these issues form a continuum which, it seems, is often a process that a linguist goes through as his or her methodological awareness deepens. Thus, the orientation of the volume towards the analyst and the analytic mind-set, as well as the attempted balance in presentation of the alternative approaches, seem the major theoretical characteristic of the book.

"Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish" provides the reader with a representative spectrum of current research in the most dynamic areas of the pragmatics of Spanish. It brings together a collection of academic essays written by well-established as well as emerging voices in Hispanic pragmatics. The essays include applications of pragmatic concepts to sub-fields of (Spanish) linguistics (i.e., pragmatics and grammar; pragmatics and applied linguistics; pragmatics and cross- and inter-cultural communication), studies of traditional topics in pragmatics (i.e., discourse markers, politeness, metaphor, humour) as well as a proposal to amalgamate the dominant pragmatic approaches, namely socio-pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics, into one comprehensive model. The essays in this collection represent both new theoretical and empirical research and as such they constitute a valuable contribution to the field of pragmatics in general and an essential reference to those researching the pragmatics of Spanish.

The focus of this volume is on semantic and pragmatic change, its causes and mechanisms. The papers gathered here offer both theoretical proposals of more general scope and in-depth studies of language-specific cases of meaning change in particular notional domains. The analyses include data from English, several Romance languages, German, Scandinavian languages, and Oceanic languages. Detailed case-studies covering central semantic domains, such as concession, evidentiality, intensification, modality, negation, scalarity, subjectivity, and temporality, allow the authors to test and refine current models of semantic change, by focusing, for instance, on the respective roles of speakers and hearers in the process and on the relationship between semantic and syntactic reanalysis. Key theoretical notions, such as presuppositions, paradigms, word order, and discourse status are revisited in a diachronic perspective to provide innovative accounts of causes and motivations for linguistic changes. A prominent theme is the evolution of procedural meanings of various kinds. Thus, several papers feature different types of pragmatic markers as their object of study, while others are concerned with items and constructions expressing modality, evidentiality, negation, and relational meanings. Closely related themes are: the interface between semantics and pragmatics/discourse, with figurative uses of language, rhetorical-argumentational strategies, discourse traditions, information structure, and the importance of dialogic contexts in change playing a salient role in several papers; the relationship between meaning change and processes such as grammaticalization, subjectification and pragmaticalization; and, the thorny issue of the categorization of linguistic items such as discourse markers or modal particles, evidentials or epistemic modals, to which the diachronic data are shown to contribute substantially. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, grammaticalization, and historical linguistics.

New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics brings together varying perspectives in second language (L2) pragmatics to show both historical developments in the field, while also looking towards the future, including theoretical, empirical, and implementation perspectives. This volume is divided in four sections: teaching and learning speech acts, assessing pragmatic competence, analyzing discourses in digital contexts, and current issues in L2 pragmatics. The chapters focus on various aspects related to the learning, teaching, and assessing of L2 pragmatics and cover a range of learning environments. The authors address current topics in L2 pragmatics such as: speech acts from a discursive perspective; pragmatics instruction in the foreign language classroom and during study abroad; assessment of pragmatic competence; research methods used to collect pragmatics data; pragmatics in computer-mediated contexts; the role of implicit and explicit knowledge; discourse markers as a resource for interaction; and the framework of translingual practice. Taken together, the chapters in this volume foreground innovations and new directions in the field of L2 pragmatics while, at the same time, ground their work in the existing literature. Consequently, this volume both highlights where the field of L2 pragmatics has been and offers cutting-edge insights into where it is going in the future.

The first substantial textbook on pragmatics to focus on Spanish. The authors discuss key theories within the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics, concentrating on the relationship between language use and socio-cultural contexts, and their uptake by Hispanists. Drawing on research by foremost scholars in the field, with reference to a wide range of 'Spanishes', including a first treatment of 'sociopragmatic variation'. Concepts throughout are illustrated with real language examples taken from different Spanish corpora. The book is carefully structured to be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate, as well as postgraduate, students.

Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish provides the reader with a representative spectrum of current research in the most dynamic areas of the pragmatics of Spanish. It brings together a collection of academic essays written by well-established as well as emerging voices in Hispanic pragmatics. The essays include applications of pragmatic concepts to sub-fields of (Spanish) linguistics (i.e., pragmatics and grammar; pragmatics and applied linguistics; pragmatics and cross- and inter-cultural communication), studies of ‘traditional’ topics in pragmatics (i.e., discourse markers, politeness, metaphor, humour) as well as a proposal to amalgamate the dominant pragmatic approaches, namely socio-pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics, into one comprehensive model. The essays in this collection represent both new theoretical and empirical research and as such they constitute a valuable contribution to the field of pragmatics in general and an essential reference to those researching the pragmatics of Spanish.