Pragmatics and non-verbal communication / Tim Wharton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wharton, Tim.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nonverbal communication.

Body language.

Physical Description:

x, 219 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Summary:

"The way we say the words we say helps us convey our intended meanings. Indeed, the tone of voice we use, the facial expressions and bodily gestures we adopt while we are talking, often add entirely new layers of meaning to those words. How the natural non-verbal properties of utterances interact with linguistic ones is a question that is often largely ignored. This book redresses the balance, providing a unique examination of non-verbal behaviours from a pragmatic perspective. It charts a point of contact between pragmatics, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, ethology and psychology, and provides the analytical basis to answer some important questions: How are non-verbal behaviours interpreted? What do they convey? How can they be best accommodated within a theory of utterance interpretation?"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Natural pragmatics 1

Introduction 1

Overview 10

2 Natural and non-natural meaning 18

Gricean meaning NN 18

Showing and meaning NN 25

Deliberately shown natural behaviours 30

3 Pragmatics and the domain of pragmatic principles 38

Relevance theory and the showing-meaning NN continuum 38

Semantic undeterminacy and lexical pragmatics 47

Translational and non-translational activation of concepts 57

4 Interjections and language 70

Interjections 70

Interjections and concepts 74

Interjections and 'response cries' 80

Interjections and meaning: 'what do interjections communicate?' 84

Interjections and procedures: 'how do interjections communicate?" 89

Interjections and language: 'are interjections part of language?' 92

The naturalness of interjections 98

5 Natural codes 107

Codes, signs and signals 107

What type of information is conveyed by natural codes? 117

Concepts, procedures and meta-proceduxes 128

6 Prosody and gesture 139

Prosody 139

What does prosody encode? 145

Gesture 149

7 Mindreaders 155

Other minds 155

Experimental evidence and future directions l65

8 The showing-meaning NN continuum and beyond 171

Two 'showing-meaning' continua 171

A prince among primates 176

Myths l84

Beyond 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521870979

0521870976

9780521691444

0521691443

OCLC:

318872002

Online:

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