Introducing Pragmatics: A Clinical Approach

This innovative, comprehensive course textbook uses a clinical approach to explore pragmatics and pragmatic language skills.

Drawing on authentic, real-life examples of pragmatic breakdown in children and adults who have developmental or acquired language disorders, Louise Cummings expertly guides readers to core insights and principles for understanding where context and meaning in human communication meet. Key features include:

• Chapter-opening learning objectives and chapter-closing summaries
• Authentic illustrative cases of atypical pragmatic interaction
• Exercises for checking knowledge and understanding
• Annotated recommended further reading
• A detailed glossary of important terms in pragmatics and clinical linguistics

Aimed equally at undergraduate and graduate students who are coming to pragmatics for the first time, the text discusses the key issues and concepts of this field in a fascinating new way. With a common, easy-to-follow structure across chapters and a wealth of pedagogical resources, this is an essential text for students of linguistics and applied linguistics, communication studies, speech-language pathology, psychology and cognitive science, and beyond.

Louise Cummings is Professor in the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. She is author or editor of many books, including Pragmatic Disorders (Springer), Clinical Linguistics (Edinburgh University Press), Clinical Pragmatics and The Cambridge Handbook of Communication Disorders (Cambridge University Press), and Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective and The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia (Routledge). She is also Editor of the Routledge Research in Speech-Language Pathology book series.