Discursive Pragmatics

Book excerpt: The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical, cognitive, grammatical, social, cultural, variational, or interactional angles, this 8th volume focuses on theories and phenomena at the level of discourse, but leaving aside conversational interaction. It provides the reader with pragmatics-oriented information on discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics, as well as text linguistics and appraisal theory, while introducing other specific approaches to discourse through concepts such as polyphony, intertextuality, genre, and énonciation. Furthermore, topics such as public discourse, narrative, figures of speech, cohesion and coherence, pragmatic markers, manipulation, and humor, are all dealt with in separate chapters. The binding idea, explained in the introduction, is that ́discursive pragmatics ́ may serve as a platform for a diversity of perspectives on discourse, as they have emerged not only in the language sciences but also in the humanities and social sciences in general.