LINGUIST List 9.961

Fri Jun 26 1998

Books: Pragmatics

Editor for this issue: Anita Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Bernadette Martinez-Keck, Recent publications on Pragmatics

We would like to bring to your attention recent publications from John
Benjamins Publishing in the field of PRAGMATICS:

RELEVANCE THEORY. Applications and implications.

Edited by Robyn Carston, Nam Sun Song and Seiji Uchida

University College London / Nara Women's University

1998 x, 299 pp. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 37

US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 330 0 Price: US$70.00

Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 5049 9 Price: NLG 140

John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com

For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com


This collection of papers arises from a meeting of relevance theorists
held in Osaka, May 29-30, 1993. Speakers at the conference included both
of the originators of the theory, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, the
editors of this volume and several other Japanese linguists and
pragmatists, all of whose work is included.

The full breadth and richness of relevance theory is represented here,
both in its applications to problems of utterance interpretation, that
fall squarely within the domain of pragmatics, and its implications for
linguistic semantics. Several papers investigate and assess the theory's
account of figurative uses of language, such as irony, metaphor and
metonymy. Other central pragmatic issues include a relevance-driven
account of generalized implicature, the role of bridging implicatures in
reference assignment, the way in which different intonation patterns
contribute to the relevance of an utterance and the application of the
theory to literary texts. The recently developed semantic distinction
between conceptually and procedurally encoded meaning, motivated by
relevance-theoretic considerations, is employed in new accounts of
several Japanese particles and in a fresh perspective on the phenomenon
of metalinguistic negation. 

The volume comes with a comprehensive glossary of relevance-theoretic
terms.


Contributions by: Dan Wilson & Deirdre Sperber; Keiko
Tanaka; Reiko Itani; Kunihiko Imai; Nam Sun Song; Akiko Yoshimura; Tomoko
Matsui; Seiji Uchida; Robyn Carston; Ken-Ichi Seto; Hideki Hamamoto;
Masa-Aki Yamanashi; Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson.


POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN TRANSITION IN EUROPE (1989-1991)

Edited by: Paul A. Chilton, Mikhail V. Ilyin and Jacob L. Mey

University of Warwick / Moscow Institute of International Relations /
Odense University

1998 x, 272 pp. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 36

US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 329 7 Price: US$69.00

Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 5048 0 Price: NLG 138

John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com

For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com


The year 1989 brought political upheavals in Central, Eastern and
Southern Europe, the effects of which have not yet ended. The political
discourse of the Cold War period disintegrated and gave way to competing
alternatives. The contributors to this book are linguists, discourse
analysts and social scientists, from all corners of the continent, whose
tools of analysis shed light on the crucial two years of transition
during which political concepts and political interaction changed in
dramatic and sometimes violent ways.


Contributions by: Mikhail V. Ilyin; Paul Chilton; Jacob Mey; Victor
Sergeyev and Nikolai Biryukov; Georgii Pocheptsov; Alexandre
Bourmeyster; Ludmila Minaeva; Marina Kaul; Elena Borisova; Anatolii
Baranov; Christina Schiffner and Peter Porsch; Kay Richardson; Pierre
Achard; Ida Kurcz; Christina Teichmann; Jasna Levinger.


DISCOURSE OF SILENCE

Dennis Kurzon

University of Haifa

1998 vi, 162 pp. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 49

US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 811 6 Price: US$48.00

Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 5062 6 Price: NLG 96

John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com

For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com


This book deals initially with the interpretation of the silent answer to
a question. From a semiotic approach to the contrast between silence and
speech mainly within a Greimasian framework - an approach which shows
insights into the general relationship between silence and speech, the
discussion then turns to the application of pragmatic tools such as
conversational analysis and adjacency pairs to the interpretation of
silence. A model is presented which attempts to explain the observer's
cognitive competence, and its limits, in being able to interpret the
silent answer. A basic distinction is also made between intentional
silence (the refusal to answer) and non-intentional silence (the
psychological inability to answer).

The interpretation of silence is then extended from a theoretical
viewpoint to an analysis of various discourse types. Firstly, silence in
the legal world is discussed mainly in terms of the accused's and the
witness's right of silence, especially their intentionally silent answers
to lawyers' questions. This develops into the "transitivization" of
silence - the right of courts to silence lawyers' references to the
silence of witnesses, and the right of legal authorities to silence the
broadcasting of direct speech.

The study gradually moves away from the direct application of the model
to the silent answer, and addresses the silencing of characters in a
literary text (Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice), in a biblical text
(Moses and speech impediment in Exodus), in opera (Moses' silence in
Schoenberg's opera, Moses und Aron), and in the final chapter, in the
cinema. Here, after the initial discussion of Ingmar Bergman's The
Silence, focus is shifted to the generation gap and the representation of
silence by song in Mike Nichols' The Graduate.

- ------------------------------------------------------------

Bernadette Martinez-Keck Tel: (215) 836-1200

Publicity/Marketing Fax: (215) 836-1204

John Benjamins North America e-mail:berniebenjamins.com

PO Box 27519 

Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 


Check out the John Benjamins web site:

http://www.benjamins.com

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1998 Contributors