Εισαγωγή στην Πραγματολογία: Γνωστικές και κοι-νωνικές όψεις της γλωσσικής χρήσης (review)

This is an excellent book on pragmatics, the first written in Greek. Costas Canakis makes a most effective use of his impressive background in linguistics, especially pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics, to produce a book that goes far beyond the needs of an introductory course. His main aim is to discuss important core topics in pragmatics without neglecting more recent developments, with a constant reminder that runs throughout the book that the consideration of social and cognitive factors is a sine qua non for an in-depth understanding of pragmatics and language use.

The book is organized into eight chapters and includes an extensive bibliography and author and subject index. In the introductory chapter, Canakis sets the scene and traces the origins of pragmatics and its place within linguistic inquiry, grounding his discussion on a number of well-known definitions of the field. This choice is triggered by his belief that "the status accorded . . . to pragmatics within any linguistic theory reflects each linguist's views on language and the most effective ways of linguistic analysis" (p. 57).

The discussion of different approaches (cf. pragmatics as a tool for coping with the deficiencies of formal semantics, the meaning-as-a-product-of-interaction approach, functionalism, relevance theory, etc.) leads the author to adopt the viewpoint that pragmatics constitutes an autonomous component of linguistic analysis, laying emphasis on the study of meaning as co-constructed by participants engaging in verbal interaction and affected by social factors involved in the generation and interpretation of utterances (see Jenny Thomas, Meaning in Interaction, New York: Longman 1995). Pragmatics is, thus, understood as an interface between the system and the use of language (cf. Stephen C. Levinson, whom the author explicitly follows).

In Chapter Two, the author focuses on the distinction between abstract and contextual meaning and on the procedure of assigning contextual meaning to linguistic expressions in real-time speech situations. Having identified the utterance as the main unit of analysis for pragmatics, as opposed to the abstract sentence traditionally targeted by semantic analysis, Canakis suggests that utterance meaning originates from the attribution of sense and reference to linguistic expressions in context and the resolution of any lexical or structural ambiguities. He proceeds to acknowledge the importance of context for the interpretation of utterance force, a second level of speaker's meaning, involving the speaker's communicative intentions. In a most efficient way he shows that, although in constant interaction, the two levels of meaning maintain a certain degree of autonomy and, thus, the comprehension of one of them does not necessarily presuppose the comprehension of the other.

Canakis takes up the topic of speech acts in Chapter Three, considering them in some detail. Setting off with a discussion of J. L. Austin and his departure from the formal semantics approach, Canakis proceeds to review John R. Searle's speech act theory and evaluate the advantages and shortcomings of the latter in light of a broader linguistic perspective. The chapter aims to focus on Searle and his contribution to the development of the field, which is done lucidly as regards both the categorization of speech acts and their production rules. The major contribution of this chapter, however, is the detailed treatment of the critique on Searle and the drawbacks of his theory—especially in relation to the absence of social parameters known to affect the production and interpretation of speech acts. Nevertheless, the section on Austin is, in my view, far too extensive and elaborate for an introductory textbook: it certainly does justice to Austin but not to the chapter.

The author deals with conversational implicature and the underlying mechanisms allowing speakers to convey much more than what they say explicitly in Chapter Four. He begins his discussion with a consideration of H. P. Grice's co-operative principle and maxims, flouting of which allows interlocutors to express and comprehend meanings far beyond an expression's semantic load. Following Thomas's tradition, Canakis gives space to the exploration of other types of maxim violations, qualifying his discussion with particularly successful and elucidative examples. The chapter concludes...