Intercultural Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

The first book-length work on intercultural pragmatics
Analyzes how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language
Boldly combines the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication.

Intercultural Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

Description

Intercultural Pragmatics studies how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language. The field first emerged in the early 21st century, joining two seemingly antagonistic approaches to pragmatics research: the cognitive-philosophical approach, which considers intention as an a priori mental state of the speaker, and the sociocultural-interactional approach, which considers it as a post factum construct created by both speaker and hearer though conversation. Istvan Kecskes, an early proponent of intercultural pragmatics, was among the first to propose merging the two to form the socio-cognitive approach now core to the field.

In Intercultural Pragmatics, the first book on the subject, Kecskes establishes the foundations of the field, boldly combining the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication. He argues that people cooperate by generating and formulating intention that is relevant to the given actual situational context. At the same time, however, because of their egocentrism they activate the most salient information to their attention in the construction and comprehension of utterances.
Within this approach, interlocutors are considered as social beings searching for meaning with individual minds embedded in a socio-cultural collectivity, and intention is a cooperation-directed practice that is governed by relevance which depends on actual situational experience.

Intercultural pragmatics is a rapidly-growing field, and the only subfield of pragmatics to incorporate features of intercultural interaction into mainstream pragmatics. This volume offers both a valuable synthesis of current research and a new way to think about pragmatics.

Intercultural Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

Intercultural Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

Author Information

Istvan Kecskes is Professor of Linguistics and education at the State University of New York, Albany. He is the President of the American Pragmatics Association and Editor-in-Chief of the journals Intercultural Pragmatics (De Gruyter), Chinese as a Second Language Research (De Gruyter) and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict (Benjamins).

Intercultural Pragmatics

Istvan Kecskes

Reviews and Awards

"This book introduces an important new dimension to the field of pragmatics, shedding much light on social interaction across cultural lines and on the way that language is used in these interactions." --Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought

"Intercultural Pragmatics presents a valuable new perspective on how individual and cultural factors are intertwined in communication. Moving beyond the traditional pragmatic concern with utterance-length exchanges among monolingual speakers, and focusing instead on the distinctive features of discourse-length exchanges among speakers with different languages and cultures, it provides genuinely important insights into an exciting new field of research." --Deirdre Wilson, University of London

"Istvan Kecskes, the internationally renowned forefather of intercultural pragmatics, has now written THE book on the subject. Professor Kecskes is an invaluable guide for exploring the sociocultural and cognitive dimensions of intercultural--and intracultural--communication and their implications for the study of pragmatics." --Laurence Horn, Yale University

"In the increasingly globalized and 'translingual' world, intercultural communication is one of the greatest practical problems facing millions of people on a daily basis. How do they manage to communicate (if they do)? This is the central question of the new field of intercultural pragmatics, of which Istvan Kecskes is the spiritus movens. It is also the question at the heart of Kecskes's new book Intercultural Pragmatics. Few questions addressed by linguists today could be more important and more fascinating." --Anna Wierzbicka, Austral National University

"Istvan Kecskes' book is a vivid and intriguing set of proposals for the understanding and explanation of verbal communication and human cognition that should bring a new light to a theory of meaning and human communication." --Jacques Moeschler, University of Geneva

"This new work on intercultural pragmatics is no less than a tour de force, given its refreshingly new socio-cognitive approach and its insistence on the inclusion of neglected topics such as pragmatic competence, formulaic language and salience inter alia." --Professor Alain Peyraube, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

"What makes this book a must for those interested in intercultural communication is its comprehensive treatment of how multilingualism and individual and societal processes shape intercultural pragmatics...This timely resource is valuable for those interested in linguistics, intercultural communication, intergroup relations, and sociology...Highly recommended." --Choice

"... Kecskes' book is a much needed monograph that summarises his extensive output, which has shaped research in the domain of intercultural pragmatics. However, as the author himself promises, it delivers much more than this. Apart from raising awareness of an often neglected setting in which communication takes place, it also covers an impressive array of topics that have been at the centre of attention in the study of language use, irrespective of interculturality. In this sense, even the comprehensive overviews of the literature on these topics render this book an indispensable reference point for anyone working in pragmatics." --LINGUST LIST