East Asian Pragmatics: Commonalities and Variations

Most of the innovative and exciting work done by East Asian pragmaticians on their languages, past and present alike, is written and published in local languages. As a result, research published in and about a particular East Asian language has been largely unavailable to those who do not speak the language.

The contributors seek to present a comprehensive survey of existing outputs of pragmatics research on three major East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese and Korean). The survey concentrates on a number of core pragmatic topics such as speech acts, deixis, discourse markers, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and face/(im)politeness. To complement and compare with the picture of research work published in the local languages, the volume also includes a survey of internationally published, English-mediated articles and books studying the regional languages or contrasting them with other languages.

A rivetting discourse on pragmatics research, it will be a valuable read for students and scholars alike.

Xinren Chen is a Professor of English and the Director of The Institute of Foreign Linguistics at Nanjing University. He is also Editor of East Asian Pragmatics and Studies in Linguistics and Literature journals.

Doreen Dongying Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.