Handbook of Pragmatics: 2002 Installment (review)

The Handbook of pragmatics, prepared under the scientific auspices of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), consists of two components: The manual (1995), which contains the essential background information, and the looseleaf annual installments that provide a state-of-the-art record of pragmatics with comprehensive articles on the approaches and applications of pragmatics. The Handbook of pragmatics is now also an electronic product of John Benjamins Publishing Company.

The 2002 installment package contains a cumulative table of contents (from 1995 to 2002), a user’s guide that replaces the 2001 version completely, and fourteen contributions to the thematic main body of the looseleaf part.

In the user’s guide, the compilers briefly explain the format of the handbook. The user’s guide also contains a detailed labeled index, with a useful explanation of the abbreviations in use and an indication of the part in which the entries are to be found.

In the first of the fourteen contributions, Jef Verschueren and Frank Brisard discuss ‘Adaptability’, claiming that biology and social interaction are indissolubly linked to each other. According to Verschueren and Brisard, a theory of pragmatics also needs to refer to the capacity for reflexiveness of the human brain, which provides a metapragmatic guidance for the individual’s choice-making operations. The second contribution, ‘Appraisal’, by Peter R. R. White, concerns the language of evaluation and provides a detailed descriptive outline of the key resources of evaluation and stance.

‘Émile Benveniste’, by Tine Van Hecke, is a thorough introduction to Benveniste’s life and work. Gerda Eva Lauerbach’s ‘Emphasis’ addresses traditional studies on emphasis in several fields of linguistics. She also provides an account of the strategies that speakers employ in order to achieve emphasis in discourse. The contribution by Jeanette K. Gundel and Thorstein Fretheim, ‘Information structure’, concerns the division between given and new information in a sentence and topic-focus structures. In ‘Intertextuality’, Slef Slembrouck examines in depth Julia Kristeva’s theory of text.

Steven Gillis and Dorit Ravid present the current state of the art as to theories of ‘Language acquisition’. Also listed are methodologies that are relevant to the study of language acquisition. Paul Chilton’s chapter, ‘Manipulation’, is concerned with techniques of persuasion and rhetorical strategies to obtain the addressee’s agreement. According to Chilton, manipulation is not inherent to language, but it is rather a prerogative of the speakers.

The next chapter is written by one of the major experts in the theory of metaphor, Miriam Taverniers. Taverniers focuses on the conception of metaphors in linguistics. She thoroughly illustrates all types of linguistic metaphors, disregarding altogether the study of metaphors as linguistic process. Lluís Payrató’s chapter, ‘Non-verbal communication’, analyzes strategies of nonverbal communication, such as paralinguistic vocal communication and gesture. Robert Binnick discusses the pragmatics of ‘Tense and aspect’. Jocelyne Vincent Marrelli’s chapter, ‘Truthfulness’, precedes the summary and commentary by Joachim Leilich on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s life and work. Last, Miriam Fried addresses the issue of ‘Word order’.