Goddard, Cliff (Ed.) (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110911114
The studies in this volume show how speech practices can be understood from a culture-internal perspective, in terms of values, norms and beliefs of the speech communities concerned. The ethnopragmatic approach stands in opposition to the culture-external universalist pragmatics represented by neo-Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. Using cultural scripts and semantic explications, the authors examine a wide range of phenomena, demonstrating both the profound “cultural shaping” of speech practices and the power and subtlety of new methods and techniques of a semantically grounded ethnopragmatics. Focusing on examples from many different cultural locations, the contributors ask not only: ‘What is distinctive about these particular ways of speaking?’, but also: ‘Why – from their own point of view – do the people concerned speak in these particular ways? What sense does it make to them?’.
Table of contents:
- Ethnopragmatics: a new paradigm (Cliff Goddard)
- Anglo scripts against “putting pressure” on other people and their linguistic manifestations (Anna Wierzbicka)
- “Lift your game Martina!”: deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English (Cliff Goddard)
- Social hierarchy in the “speech culture” of Singapore (Jock Onn Wong)
- Why the “inscrutable” Chinese face? Emotionality and facial expression in Chinese (Zhengdao Ye)
- Cultural scripts: glimpses into the Japanese emotion world (Rie Hasada)
- The communicative realisation of confianza and calor humano in Colombian Spanish (Catherine E. Travis)
- “When I die, don’t cry”: the ethnopragmatics of “gratitude” in West African languages (Felix K. Ameka)
Each chapter has its own entry, where additional information is provided.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
