Goddard, Cliff (2006). Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 1-30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110911114.1
In this introductory chapter, it is argued that, for many years, the dominant paradigm in linguistic pragmatics was strongly universalist: human communication was seen as largely governed by a rich and substantive inventory of universal principles. Fortunately, concern with culture-internal accounts of speech practices and with the profound “cultural shaping” of speech practices has refused to go away over the long period of universalist dominance. In recent years, there have been signs that the tide is turning, as the weaknesses of the universalist paradigm, especially its ethnocentrism, terminological slipperiness and descriptive inadequacy, have attracted mounting criticism. Nevertheless, the field of pragmatics as a whole still suffers from a remarkable degree of “culture blindness”.
In sharp contrast, the studies in this volume start from the premise that speech practices are best understood from a culture-internal perspective. Focusing on examples from many different cultural locations, the contributing authors 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?” In addition to this common objective, the contributors share a common methodology based on two decades work in cross-linguistic semantics, and a common concern for grounding in linguistic evidence. Together, this three-fold combination – objective, methodology, and evidence base – constitutes a venture which is distinctive enough to warrant a new term: “ethnopragmatics”.
