Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context

The ethnopragmatic approach stands in opposition to the culture-external universalist pragmatics represented by neo-Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. Using "cultural scripts" and semantic explications - techniques developed over 20 years work in cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues - the authors examine a wide range of phenomena, including: speech acts, terms of address, phraseological patterns, jocular irony, facial expressions, interactional routines, discourse particles, expressive derivation, and emotionality. The authors and languages are: Anna Wierzbicka (English), Cliff Goddard (Australian English), Jock Wong (Singapore English), Zhengdao Ye (Chinese), Catherine Travis (Colombian Spanish), Rie Hasada (Japanese) and Felix Ameka (Ewe). Taken together, these studies demonstrate both the profound "cultural shaping" of speech practices, and the power and subtlety of new methods and techniques of a semantically grounded ethnopragmatics.

The book will appeal not only to linguists and anthropologists, but to all scholars and students with an interest in language, communication and culture.