Aims

This book aims to identify areas of common ground between pragmatics, pragmatic impairment, language, cognition and communication. It is unusual in that it accords equal weight to each, and focuses on the synergy between them.

Apart from recent interest in ‘mind-reading’ problems in autism by some practitioners of mainstream pragmatics (e.g. Wilson, 2005), the nature of pragmatic impairment and therefore its potential significance for pragmatics generally is largely unknown outside clinical circles. The few books published on pragmatic impairment (e.g. Gallagher, 1991; Leinonen, Letts and Smith, 2000; McTear and Conti-Ramsden, 1992; Müller, 2000; Smith and Leinonen, 1992) are written primarily for clinicians and for the most part aim to show how various pragmatic theories and analytical frameworks may be applied in the description, assessment and treatment of communication disorders. Furthermore, although generally excellent in meeting their stated clinical aims, their focus tends to be rather narrow – for example, concentrating exclusively on developmental disorders. In addition, because their primary interest is in application rather than theory, they also tend to be both eclectic and uncritical with regard to the pragmatic theories they make use of. The lack of two-way traffic between pragmatic theory and clinical practice is perhaps surprising given the growing number of researchers in areas such as syntax and semantics who regularly take into account language pathologies in their attempts to understand normal language processing and to evaluate linguistic theories.