This three-authored chapter discusses multiple function-oriented and context-based approaches to grammar, discourse/talk and text, which gave primacy to communication, meaning, actual language use, pragmatic patterning, social and cultural issues, and/or human cognition. (New) theoretical constructs, (various) themes, (different) methodologies and data, came from functional, cognitive, critical, systemic and enunciative linguistics and sociolinguistics, as well as speech act theory, pragmatics, ethnography, anthropology, argumentation theory, social semiotics, multimodal studies, sociology, (socio)cultural and critical studies. Language was analyzed as a (spoken and written) tool, a social practice, a collective process and product, whose forms (words, expressions, clauses, sentences/utterances, discourses/text, talk and interaction) are largely explained by their multiple communicative functions, patterns of use, and social, cultural and cognitive correlates.

The topics touched on include: models of communication, situation of interaction, speaker’s vs. hearer’s perspective, referential, social and expressive meaning, iconic principles in language, politeness, social identity and power. Approaches include: speech act theory, Gricean pragmatics, ethnography of communication (Gumperz and Hymes), analysis of oral narrative (Labov), functional grammar (Dik), functional discourse grammar (Rijkhoff), discourse representation theory (Kamp), systemic functional grammar (Halliday), discourse dependent grammar (Hopper and Thompson), emergent grammar (Hopper), grammaticalization, functional-cognitive grammar (Langacker), text linguistics, enunciation theory, and critical discourse analysis.

This chapter, by four authors, traces the rise, development, critique, and demise of a diversity of theoretical stances in philosophy and linguistic meaning from 1880-2000, e.g.,

• — modern logic, formal semantics, the linguistic turn in philosophy, truth-conditional semantics, intensional logic, possible world-semantics, categorial (Montague) grammar and ‘generalized quantifiers’;

• — logical positivism and its critiques, ‘analytic’ statements, ‘radical interpretation’, ‘truth-theoretical semantics’, ‘proof-theoretical semantics’;

• — psychological accounts of meaning, communitarian agreement; proper names as ‘rigid designators’; reference fixing vs. the properties of a ‘kind’ in all possible worlds;

• — the ‘cognitive’ era: meaning as a property of mental states (’concepts’), the philosophy of mind, the naturalization program, intentional generalizations with a computationalist view, ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ concepts of meaning, and the functions of informational structures.

• — Speech Act Theory and pragmatics: ‘ordinary language philosophy’; performance in a context, felicity conditions, intentional and conventional aspects, communicative intentions, conventional meanings, the Cooperative principle, and inferences from conversational implicatures; presumption of rationality, ‘relevance theory’, combining pragmatics and a theory of mind; Discourse Analysis (Birmingham and Geneva School); enunciation theory; intersubjectivity; ‘polyphonic’ notion of subject, argumentative values, scales, and beliefs, Topoi Theory and the ‘theory of semantic blocks’.

This chapter surveys cuneiform texts that reflect various degrees of linguistic awareness, providing the reader with a general perspective on Babylonian semiotics and linguistics. The chapter begins with a discussion of the scholarly settings in which cuneiform developed and goes on to explore how this writing system, together with practices of divination and magic, influenced the linguistic consciousness of scribes. It examines a variety of texts, including the basic elementary school exercise SA A, which Assyro-Babylonian scholars often interpreted as an esoteric text describing the very first human words. It also investigates the conceptions of language in epic narratives such Adapa and the South Wind and Gilgamesh.

In this chapter, we think about the different things that we do when we produce utterances. Communication is not only about the exchange of information. We also perform acts and, in some cases, change the world when we speak, sign, or write. Speech act theory emerged as a means of understanding and analysing the things we do when we use language. We track the development of speech act theory, focusing on the work of two influential thinkers in the field: Austin and Searle. We begin by looking at what Austin called performatives and discuss how their meaning can be understood in terms of felicity conditions. We then move on to explore Austin’s distinction between locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. John R. Searle’s work responds to and develops the work of Austin. He identifies four categories of felicity condition and uses these to propose a classification system for illocutionary acts. We consider Searle’s discussion of indirect speech acts as a key contribution to speech act theory and pragmatics more widely. The chapter ends with a brief overview of how speech act theory has been applied and developed since the work of Austin and Searle.

The present study draws on speech act theory to discuss the constitutive role of the media in influencing and interpreting official apologies in the realm of international conflict resolution. The Sino–US diplomatic impasse after a plane collision over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001 proved to be a useful case study as it revolved around blame attribution/avoidance and demands for/refusal of an official apology. The Chinese requests for a formal US apology and the latter’s expressions of regret were discursive issues of contention and subject to different media interpretations. Results show that the US and Chinese media participated in negotiating an American expression of “apology/regret,” disseminating the message through skillful translation techniques, and metapragmatically interpreting its significance.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the chronological background of cross-cultural pragmatics. We argue that cross-cultural pragmatics cannot be traced back to a single academic tradition but rather it is an outcome of the confluence of various strands of academic inquiry, spanning speech act theory, to discourse analysis and to contrastive linguistics. We also discuss the ground-breaking Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), which represents a cornerstone in the development of cross-cultural pragmatics. We devote particular attention to the research methodologies that the CCSARP Project deployed. We argue that while the methodological framework of the CCSARP Project has been subject to major criticisms, it laid down the foundations of what we define as dualcontrastive and ancillary research in our cross-cultural pragmatic framework. In Chapter 2, we also discuss the current state of the field and the reason why this book is needed to fill a knowledge gap.

Chapter 2 reviews the state of the art of current attempts to syntacticize speech acts. These attempts are mostly based on classical speech act theory as developed by Austin and Searle in the sixties. It presents a brief overview of classic speech act theory. It identifies the issues pertaining to the relation between sentence structure and speech act type, which sets the stage for introducing the idea that speech act structure itself is part of syntax. I discuss the various stages and guises of this idea starting with Ross’s performative hypothesis and reviewing reanalyses of the idea within current syntactic theory. I then argue that all existing approaches toward the syntacticization of speech acts suffer from several weaknesses: specifically, most analyses fail to consider advances that have been made since classic speech act theory, namely the focus on the dynamic and interactional component of utterances.

In this chapter, I present the notion of an indirect speech act originatingin Searle's classic speech act theory and I discuss how other accounts inthe field of philosophy of language have revisited this notion.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

Tzanne’s analysis follows Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, with the author explicitly stating her role as a ‘legitimate analyst’ identifying and interpreting the instances of politeness in her data. The chapter focuses on the use of positive politeness and identity construction in the context of digital communication. More specifically, Tzanne examines the comment section of a food blog entitled Συνταγές της παρέας (‘Recipes from/for a group of friends’). The data neatly illustrate the tendency for Greek people to orient to positive politeness, with the judges of the recipes endorsing the identity of a friend through expressing enthusiastic praise, stressing common background knowledge, and using informal endearing terms. On the whole, the commenters tend to construct an identity that reflects the importance attached to in-group membership in Greece.

In her study of Greek offers, Bella uses experimental data collection methods to compare the use of politeness in offers directed at friends and offers made by students to their professors. Bella uses open role plays to establish the formulations her participants deem appropriate in the two situations, and retrospective verbal interviews to provide information about the motivations for their choice of politeness strategies. In the Greek context, offers have been defined as positive politeness devices, enhancing solidarity and reaffirming relationships, in line with the classification of Greece as a positive politeness culture. Bella’s study, however, illustrates that offers vary significantly according to the relationship between the interlocutors, with offers in asymmetrical situations characterised by a preference for negative politeness. These differences are reflected not only in the amount of directness expressed, but also through the degree of insistence. This sequential feature of offers is further illustrated on the basis of a naturally occurring interaction that validates the experimental data, while showing that politeness is an interactional phenomenon.

This chapter introduces the context in which Grice presented his theory of implicatures, with special reference to speech act theory. It goes on to present Grice’s main contribution to pragmatics, detailing his principle of cooperation and presenting an overview of the different types of implicatures that he defined. Finally, the chapter presents a number of criticisms that have been levelled at his theory.

This chapter introduces the context in which Grice presented his theory of implicatures, with special reference to speech act theory. It goes on to present Grice’s main contribution to pragmatics, detailing his principle of cooperation and presenting an overview of the different types of implicatures that he defined. Finally, the chapter presents a number of criticisms that have been levelled at his theory.