Stephen C. Levinson: "The Dark Matter of Pragmatics"

A vast amount of research has gone into language as a symbolic code; much less (especially in psycholinguistics) has been invested in how it works in context. This book argues that because we can understand language much faster than we can produce it, we have devised many ways to mean a lot more than we say. The book outlines five such ways, and goes on to point out how much there is still to discover about how this all works.

Stephen: “It might be a good introduction to linguistic pragmatics for those unfamiliar with it, and for experienced researchers may help to pinpoint gulfs in our understanding. I enjoyed writing it, and I’m very grateful to the Max Planck Society for making it Open Access – that way, far more people can read it if they want to.”

Link to publication