Pragmatics and Discourse Studies

[Tahir Wood]

Thanks, this discussion has been very useful so far.
Tahir

>>> "galey modan" <gmodan at gmail.com> 03/26/08 12:56 PM >>>
Tahir,

I think the issue here is that there are broader and narrower
definitions of
pragmatics, and the Journal of Pragmatics adheres to the narrower
defnition.
While in Europe and maybe Latin America (though I'm not sure of that)
pragmatics covers 'language in use' along the lines that Teun outlined,
in
the US pragmatics is more narrowly defined as a study of language
meaning in
use (so pragmatic meaning as opposed to semantic meaning), and
generally has
a more formal orientation. It's focused more on the mechanics of such
phenomena as speech acts, scalar implicature, signalling of given and
new
information, presupposition, etc. In this perspective, interactional
processes such as turn-taking or footing, or other discourse phenomena
such
as discourse markers, reported speech, pronoun use, tense variation,
or
framing would fall under discourse analysis but not under pragmatics.
Although the _Journal of Pragmatics_ is not an American journal, its
take on
pragmatics is more narrow and more formalist than, for example, the
journal
_Pragmatics_. From the brief description you've given, it sounds like
a
journal like _Discourse Processes_ or _Text_ might be a good venue for
your
work.

best regards,

Galey


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