Ethnopragmatics

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This volume presents studies that explore speech practices from a culture-internal perspective, emphasizing the values, norms, and beliefs of specific speech communities. The contributing authors investigate not only the distinctiveness of various speaking styles but also the rationale behind them from the speakers' viewpoints. This ethnopragmatic approach contrasts with culture-external universalist pragmatics, such as neo-Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. Utilizing "cultural scripts" and semantic explications—developed through over 20 years of cross-cultural semantics research by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues—the authors analyze a diverse array of phenomena, including speech acts, terms of address, phraseological patterns, jocular irony, facial expressions, interactional routines, discourse particles, expressive derivation, and emotionality. The contributors include experts studying English, Australian English, Singapore English, Chinese, Colombian Spanish, Japanese, and Ewe. Collectively, these studies illustrate the deep cultural influences on speech practices and showcase innovative methods in semantically grounded ethnopragmatics. This work will interest linguists, anthropologists, and anyone engaged in the study of language, communication, and culture.