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Chapter 1: Introduction to pragmatic and discourse disorders

Chapter 1: Introduction to pragmatic and discourse disorders

pp. 1-17

Authors

, Nottingham Trent University
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Summary

For a significant number of children and adults, difficulties with communication are linked to problems with pragmatics and discourse. These aspects of language have been variously defined within linguistics and a range of other disciplines. Pragmatics is often defined as the study of the use of language or of language meaning in context (Cummings, 2005). The emphasis is on speaker meaning rather than sentence meaning (the latter is studied by semantics), and on how hearers draw on features of context to derive meaning beyond that which is expressed by the proposition of a sentence. (Of course, even this definition of pragmatics is somewhat simplistic, as it is now widely recognised that pragmatic factors are very much involved in determining propositional meaning.) The standard definition of discourse in textbooks on linguistics talks of discourse as being ‘language above the sentence’. In much the same way that sentences have an internal structure, extended extracts of spoken, written or signed language (discourse) are believed to observe certain structural patterns. Revealing these patterns across all forms of language use, from spoken narratives to conversations and written texts, is the focus of the study of discourse analysis.

As these definitions demonstrate, there is much that unites the study of pragmatics and discourse. Both areas are concerned to look beyond individual sentences to understand how speakers and hearers (readers and writers) construct and interpret language meaning. While language is abstracted from the contexts (including its users) in which it is found in linguistic disciplines such as syntax and semantics, pragmatists and discourse analysts seek to understand the complex interrelationships that exist between language, its users and the wider context. Given the shared concerns and goals of these disciplines, it should not be surprising to discover that neat boundaries cannot be drawn around pragmatics and discourse. By the same token, the reader should not be surprised to learn that many of the same children and adults who experience breakdown in the pragmatics of language also encounter a range of discourse difficulties. The co-occurring deficits in pragmatics and discourse, which are found in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder or traumatic brain injury, attest to the considerable overlap that exists between these linguistic domains. It is the interconnectedness of pragmatics and discourse that is the basis of their joint examination in this volume.

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