Pragmatics: A Book Review

Pragmatics was written by Chapman (2011) and published by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and Kings Lynn in Great Britain. Chapman’s monograph offers a beautifully clear and wide-ranging introduction to all the major developments in core theoretical pragmatics, from the very beginning to the present day. With increasing scholarly interest in meaning in context in the field of linguistics (e.g. Halliday, 2001; Hasan, 2009; Van Dijk, 2009), it seems like a timely contribution. The author’s aims of this book are to describe both early and recent developments in pragmatics, and also to show how pragmatics relates to the study of language more generally. It does more than provide an introductory overview. It encourages the reader to engage with some of the fundamental issues faced by pragmatics, and to appreciate the current controversies and debates in which they are engaged. The primary aim of this book is to contribute students taking undergraduate degree level courses in pragmatics or in linguistics more generally, it should also be useful to postgraduate students in these areas and to researchers in linguistics and related disciplines who are interested in finding out about what is currently going on in pragmatics