Abstract:
"This introduction to pragmatics - the study of language in use - provides an authoritative, up-to-date, and comprehensive account of its central topics and a guide to the latest research. It opens with a discussion of the scope, meaning, and history of pragmatics from Aristotle to the present. It shows how the subject relates to the study of semantics, syntax, and sociolinguistics and to such fields as the philosophy of language, linguistic anthropology, and artificial intelligence."--BOOK JACKET.