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33 - Emancipatory Pragmatics

from Part III - Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Scott Saft ,
Sachiko Ide  and
Kishiko Ueno
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
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Summary

Emancipatory pragmatics (EP) is an emerging approach to sociopragmatics that aims to develop research frameworks based on languages that have rarely been considered within mainstream Western academia. After first describing some of the events that led to the advancement of the EP approach, we present findings from Thai and ǀGui, an African language, that challenge existing theories of language usage in two areas of pragmatics, politeness and turn-taking. Discussion then focuses on the proposal that the concepts of ba and basho can serve as the basis of a more inclusive framework for understanding social interaction. Following presentation of the foundational basis of ba-theory, we offer examples of language data to demonstrate its application to Japanese, to Hawaiian and also to English, thereby suggesting the potential of ba-theory to understand interaction across a diverse set of languages. Finally, we discuss the need for work that will not only investigate how ba-theory may apply to a wider range of languages but also explore other inclusive frameworks that will push the field of pragmatics to attain a richer understanding of the linguistic and interactional potential of people throughout the world.

Keywords

emancipatory pragmatics(im)politenessturn-takingba theorycross-cultural
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 710 - 732
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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