Reviewed by William Salmon, Yale University

Yan Huang’s Pragmatics covers the core areas of Anglo-American pragmatics, such as implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and deixis, as well as the interface between pragmatics and areas such as semantics and syntax. H provides useful overviews of generally-agreed-upon concepts, and in those matters where there is less agreement, he adequately explores the debate. As such, H’s book often imparts the feel of a handbook as well as that of a textbook.

In the introductory chapter, H provides a history of Anglo-American pragmatics and explains the need for a theory of pragmatics within a larger, integrated linguistic theory. The book is then divided into two parts. Part 1, which contains Chs. 2–5, explores the central topics of pragmatics. Ch. 2 begins with conversational implicature, discussing H. P. Grice’s original arrangement of the cooperative principle and maxims as well as two neo-Gricean arrangements: Laurence Horn’s bipartite and Stephen Levinson’s tripartite reductions of Grice. Ch. 3 explores presupposition, the projection problem, and three approaches to the analysis of presupposition. Ch. 4 investigates speech acts, from the taxonomies of J. L. Austin and John Searle through indirect speech acts, politeness, and crosscultural variation. Ch. 5 covers deixis, from the basic categories of person, time, and space, to social and discourse deixis.

Part 2, which contains Chs. 6–8, considers pragmatics and its interfaces. Ch. 6 explores the interface of pragmatics and cognition, surveying relevance theory as well as Jerry Fodor’s theory of cognitive modularity. Ch. 7 discusses pragmatics and semantics; specifically, the idea of pragmatic intrusion into what is said. The comparison of Kent Bach’s implicature, relevance theory’s explicature, and François Recanati’s unarticulated constituents is particularly useful. In Ch. 8, H raises issues with Chomskian binding theory, arguing instead for a theory of anaphora in which pragmatics interacts with syntax. The book also contains an index and glossary as well as exercise sets (with solutions).

The manner in which H places the reader in the middle of the debates is one of the many strengths of this volume. Although this book seems to lack the range and depth of coverage of Stephen Levinson’s Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), the volumes have different aims: Levinson’s book is an early and more comprehensive introduction to the field, covering a wide array of phenomena. Whereas, almost a quarter century later, H’s purpose is to explore the central problems of the field as well as the interface of pragmatics with related areas. This book is both timely and engaging and is well worth reading.