Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Language and Linguistics
  4. Semantics and pragmatics
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

212 results in Semantics and pragmatics

Page 1 of 11

Language, Imitation and Creativity
  • Dialogic Resonance in Grammar and Pragmatics
  • Vittorio Tantucci
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026

Ideology and the Language of Human Rights
  • Language, Text, and Ideology in Amnesty International Appeal Letters
  • Gerald Delahunty
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • It is crucial to apply robust analytic methods to the study of discourses deemed 'ideological'. This book applies the Guidelines and Procedures for ideological research, as presented in Verschueren's Ideology in Language Use, to an exciting new area of study; discourses intended to improve humanity. It analyses the discourse of Amnesty International appeal letters, to show (contrary to what the field of critical discourse analysis often assumes) that ideological discourse can sometimes have a positive, rather than a negative, agenda. It explores how Amnesty's choice of words, sentence structures, speech acts, and other discourse elements, enact its ideological meanings, functions, frames of reference and interpretation, as well as the social, interactional, and ideological positioning of discourse participants in its reports, communications, and appeals. These findings have wider implications not only for the field of discourse analysis, but also for theories within pragmatics, such as speech act theory and (im)politeness.

The English Language on Trial
  • Witnessing Disputed Meanings in American Courts
  • John A. Hawkins
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • Many lawsuits arise over disagreements about language and about the meanings of everyday words, phrases, and sentences. This book draws on over fifty cases involving disputed meanings in the American legal system where the author served as an expert witness or consultant, to explore the interaction between language and law. Stepping back from the legal specifics and their outcomes, it analyzes the disputes from the perspective of the language sciences, especially semantics and pragmatics, and language comprehension. It seeks to understand why, and in what areas of English grammar, lexis, and usage, they have arisen among speakers who do not normally miscommunicate and disagree like this. The cases involve contracts, patents, advertising, trademarks, libel, and defamation, and descriptive insights and methods from the language sciences are applied to each case to make explicit the meanings that speakers would normally assign to English.

Semantic Research
  • From Data to Analysis
  • Juergen Bohnemeyer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026
  • The first of its kind, this textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of semantics and pragmatics from an interactionist perspective, grounded entirely on empirical methods of social/behavioural science. Designed for advanced undergraduate students, beginning graduate students, and practicing researchers, it responds to the growing requirement that rather than relying on their own native speaker intuitions, students gather and analyze semantic data in a broad range of research contexts, from fieldwork to psycholinguistic and child language research. Practical in its approach, it provides the tools that the advanced student needs in order to 'do' this semantic research, in both field and laboratory contexts. This is facilitated by an innovative view of meaning that combines reference and mental representations as aspects of communicative interaction. It is accompanied by a glossary of terms and a range of exercises for students, along with model answers to the exercises for instructors.

Modal Sentences
  • Anastasia Giannakidou, Alda Mari
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • Building on the logical tradition of possible world semantics, this innovative book explores the rich and diverse empirical domain of modality in language, offering an ambitious theory of linguistic modality as indicative of uncertainty. It covers a wide variety of languages ranging from English, Greek, Italian and French, to Native American and Asian languages, and studies modals alongside evidentials, questions, and imperatives, to enable a deeper understanding of modality. The authors introduce a new analysis of linguistic necessity as conveying evidential bias, identifying new categories such as flexible necessity modals, and offering a framework for the linguistic category of evidentiality as a branch of epistemic modality. They also study the relationship between questions and modals through the concepts of nonveridical equilibrium, reflection, and evidential bias. Laying out the formal semantic tools step-by-step, it is essential reading for both scholars and students of semantics, philosophy, computational linguistics, typology and communication theory.

Onomatopoeia
  • The Colorful World of Sounds
  • Lívia Körtvélyessy
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    13 November 2025
  • How do languages capture and represent the sounds of the world? Is this a universal phenomenon? Drawing from data taken from 124 different languages, this innovative book offers a detailed exploration of onomatopoeia, that are imagic icons of sound events. It provides comprehensive analysis from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, and identifies the prototypical semiotic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, word-formation, and socio-pragmatic features of onomatopoeia. Supported with numerous examples from the sample languages, the book highlights the varied scope of onomatopoeia in different languages, its relationship to ideophones and interjections, and the role of sound symbolism, particularly phonesthemes, in onomatopoeia-formation. It introduces an onomasiological model of onomatopoeia-formation, identifies onomatopoeic patterns, and specifies the factors affecting the similarities and differences between onomatopoeias standing for the same sound event. Filling a major gap in language studies, it is essential reading for researchers and students of phonology, morphology, semiotics, poetics, and linguistic typology.

The Sociopragmatics of Emotion
  • Edited by Laura Alba-Juez, Michael Haugh
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    25 September 2025
  • Emotion plays a critical role in every human interaction and permeates all social activity. Displaying, responding to, and talking about emotions is thus central to human language, communication, and social interaction. However, emotions are multidimensional, indeterminate, and inherently situated phenomena, which makes studying them in contextualised settings challenging for researchers. This groundbreaking book illustrates what a sociopragmatic perspective brings to the broader scholarly understanding of emotion and its role in social life, and sets out to lay the necessary foundations for a sociopragmatic theorisation of emotion. It brings together a renowned team of multidisciplinary scholars to demonstrate how evaluation, relationships, and morality are central to any account of emotions in discourse and interaction. It also exemplifies how a sociopragmatic approach to emotions pays more attention to the role that different discourse systems play in how emotions are expressed, interpreted, responded to, and talked about across different languages and cultures.

Literature and Art as Cognitive Objects
  • From a Poetics of Language to a Poetics of Action
  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Published online:
    04 September 2025
    Print publication:
    18 September 2025
  • What makes literature and art the distinct kinds of entities they are? Previous attempts to prove that artworks and literary texts are formally and structurally distinguishable from other objects have been misinterpreted to mean that any distinction between art and non-art must be largely sociological. This book takes a radically new approach to this long-standing question. Shifting the focus from the artwork itself to art as a case of human agency, it sets out a groundbreaking theory of literature and art as a single cognitive and natural entity. It argues that literature and art is neither sociologically determined nor a body of artefacts, but a unique type of action enabled by art-specific processes in the mind-internal and body-internal reality of human agents. With wide implications for existing debates, this book is essential reading for researchers and students in linguistics, philosophy and the cognitive sciences.

The Interaction Engine
  • Language in Social Life and Human Evolution
  • Stephen C. Levinson
  • Published online:
    16 May 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025
  • Communicative interaction forms the core of human experience. In this fascinating book Levinson, one of the world's leading scholars in the field, explores how human communicative interaction is structured, the demands it puts on our cognitive processing, and how its system evolved out of continuities with other primate systems. It celebrates the role of the 'interaction engine' which drives our social interaction, not only in human life, but also in the evolution of our species – showing how exchanges such as words, glances, laughter and face-to-face encounters bring us our greatest and most difficult experiences, and have come to define what it means to be human. It draws extensively on the author's fieldwork with speakers across multiple cultures and communities, and was inspired by his own experiences during the Covid lockdown, when humans were starved of the very social interaction that shapes our lives. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Logic for Everyone
  • From Proof to Paradox
  • Jason Decker
  • Published online:
    12 May 2025
    Print publication:
    17 April 2025
  • A rigorous, yet accessible and entertaining introduction to the field of logic, this book provides students with a unique insight into logic as a living field and how it connects to other fields of inquiry including philosophy, computer science, linguistics, and mathematics. With no background knowledge needed, students are introduced to a critical examination of 'classical logic', and the technical issues and paradoxes that may be encountered. Each chapter includes key pedagogical features such as marginal notes, definitions, chapter summaries and practice exercises. Arguments are backed up by authentic examples of logic within natural languages and everyday life. The flexible chapter structure allows instructors to tailor their teaching for either a one-semester or two-semester course, according to their students' needs and knowledge. Online resources include a companion website featuring further readings, class handouts, LaTeX resources, along with an Online Proof Evaluator allowing students to get real-time feedback.

Modality in Mind
  • Jan Nuyts
  • Published online:
    25 March 2025
    Print publication:
    27 March 2025
  • Modality – the ways in which language can express grades of reality or truth – is the subject of a vast and long-established body of research. In this book, field-leader Jan Nuyts brings together twenty years of his research to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated view on areas of contentious debate within modality, from a functional and cognitive perspective. The book provides an empirically grounded, conceptual reanalysis of modality and related categories including evidentiality, volition, intention, directivity, subjectivity and mirativity. It argues for the dissolution of the category of modality and for an alternative division of the wider field of semantic notions at stake. The analysis also reflects on how to model the language faculty, and on the issue of language and thought. It is essential reading for researchers interested in the semantics of modality and in the implications of this domain for understanding the cognitive infrastructure for language and thought.

Language and Politics
  • A Cross-Cultural Pragmatics Perspective
  • Julianne House, Dániel Z. Kádár
  • Published online:
    20 February 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025
  • The research and teaching of language and politics has mainly been carried out in the fields of critical discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. This groundbreaking book provides a concise introduction to the field from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics. It introduces a strictly language-based, bottom-up and comprehensive model for analysing political data, which allows the reader to examine political and socio-political data without pre-held convictions and prejudices, avoiding many pitfalls that have lurked for a long time in the study of political language use. It is illustrated with a wealth of data and case studies drawn from many linguacultures, including Anglophone ones, China, Japan, Germany and the former Yugoslavia, and from different contexts of political language use, such as diplomacy, activism, public communication and news articles. It includes handy further reading lists, discussion points and a comprehensive glossary, making it ideal for anyone keen to know how language interacts with politics.

Verbal Medicines
  • The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms
  • Leslie K. Arnovick
  • Published online:
    29 November 2024
    Print publication:
    07 November 2024
  • Religious texts played a central role in Early English, and this innovative book looks in particular at how medieval Christians used prayers and psalms in healing the sick. At first glance, the variety and multiplicity of utterances, prayers, exorcistic formulas, and other incantations found in a single charm may seem to be random and eclectic. However, this book shows that charms had distinct, logical linguistic characteristics, as well performative aspects that were shaped by their usage and cultural significance. Together, these qualities gave the texts a unique role in the early development of English, in particular its use in ritual and folklore. Arnovick identifies four forms of incantations and a full chapter is devoted to each form, arranged to reflect the lived experiences of medieval Christians, from their baptism in infancy, to daily prayer and attendance at Church celebrations, and to their Confession and anointing during grave illness.

Compelling Communication
  • Writing, Public Speaking and Storytelling for Professional Success
  • Simon Hall
  • Published online:
    30 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024
  • Do your communication skills let you down? Do you struggle to explain and influence, persuade and inspire? Are you failing to fulfil your potential because of your inability to wield words in the ways you'd like? This book has the solution. Written by a University of Cambridge Communication Course lead, journalist and former BBC broadcaster, it covers everything from the essentials of effective communication to the most advanced skills. Whether you want to write a razor sharp briefing, shine in an important presentation, hone your online presence, or just get yourself noticed and picked out for promotion, all you need to know is here. From writing and public speaking, to the beautiful and stirring art of storytelling, and even using smartphone photography to help convey your message, this invaluable book will empower you to become a truly compelling communicator.

Salience of Information in Japanese
  • Discourse and the Syntax–Pragmatics Interface
  • Mitsuaki Shimojo
  • Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    04 April 2024
  • 'Salience' is a linguistic phenomenon whereby information that is 'given', or 'new', is distributed and presented within a sentence in particular ways that convey its relevance. Although it has been widely described as the speaker's linguistic choices based on the hearer's perspective, it has received less attention as the speaker's manipulations of the hearer's cognitive states. This timely study redresses that balance by analysing several morphosyntactic phenomena in Japanese, drawing on a wide range of authentic language examples. Taking a functionalist perspective, it brings together studies of grammar and discourse, which are often described separately, and deploys the combined grammar-discourse approach in Role and Reference Grammar, the structural-functionalist theory in which syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are equally central to our understanding of language. It also offers an analysis of second language (L2) learners' Japanese discourse, and demonstrates the relevance of that analysis to issues outside of traditional second language research.

Methods in Historical Corpus Pragmatics
  • Epistemic Stance in Early Modern English
  • Daniela Landert
  • Published online:
    22 February 2024
    Print publication:
    29 February 2024
  • Based on an extensive corpus-based study, this revealing book explores how epistemic stance is expressed in the early modern period, and in doing so, presents new methodologies for using corpora to investigate issues in historical pragmatics. It provides a new, corpus-driven method for the analysis of pragmatic functions that rely on context-dependent interpretations. By retrieving passages that include a high-density of the pragmatic function under investigation, the subsequent analysis can reveal previously neglected forms and context-dependent factors. It includes four empirical studies that apply the method to the analysis of epistemic stance in four Early Modern English corpora, the result of which emphasise the importance of context for the expression of stance. It also includes an appendix with inventories of Early Modern English stance expressions, offering starting points for further research studies. It is essential reading for researchers and students in historical pragmatics and corpus pragmatics.

Connectives and Discourse Relations
  • Sandrine Zufferey, Liesbeth Degand
  • Published online:
    22 February 2024
    Print publication:
    29 February 2024
  • Illustrated with examples from a rich range of languages and genres, this book provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the meanings and functions of connectives, and the discourse relations they communicate. It begins with theoretical chapters that illustrate the many interfaces present in the study of connectives and discourse relations, using diachronic data to illustrate how connectives incorporate such a wide range of functions in synchronic language use. The second half of the book presents the rapidly growing body of studies that have used empirical data to assess theories of connectives and discourse relations, spanning fields as diverse as discourse processing, first and second language acquisition, and cross-linguistic studies. End-of-chapter discussion questions and lists of further readings are included, along with a comprehensive glossary of key terms. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available open access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Pragmatics and Emotion
  • Tim Wharton, Louis de Saussure
  • Published online:
    13 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • It has long been received wisdom in semantics and pragmatics that 'the head' and 'the heart' are two opposing forces, a view that has led scholars, until now, to explore the mental processes behind cognition, and the mental processes behind emotion, as two separate entities. This bold, innovative book challenges this view, and provides an original study of how we communicate our emotions through language, drawing on both pragmatic theory and affective science. It begins with the assumption that emotional or expressive meaning plays such a central role in human interaction that any pragmatic theory worth its salt must account for it. It meets the associated challenges head-on and strives to integrate affect within one theory of utterance interpretation, showing that emotional meaning and rationality/reasoning can be analysed within one framework. Written in a clear and concise style, it is essential reading for anyone interested in communication and emotion.

The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context
  • Edited by Jesús Romero-Trillo
  • Published online:
    30 November 2023
    Print publication:
    14 December 2023
  • For more than a decade, linguistics has moved increasingly away from evaluating language as an autonomous phenomenon, towards analysing it 'in use', and showing how its function within its social and interactional context plays an important role in shaping in its form. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from some of the most influential scholars in linguistics today, this Handbook presents an extensive picture of the study of language as it used 'in context' across a number of key linguistic subfields and frameworks. Organised into five thematic parts, the volume covers a range of theoretical perspectives, with each chapter surveying the latest work from areas as diverse as syntax, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, conversational analysis, multimodality, and computer-mediated communication. Comprehensive, yet wide-ranging, the Handbook presents a full description of how the theory of context has revolutionised linguistics, and how its renewed study is crucial in an ever-changing world.

Time, Metaphor, and Language
  • A Cognitive Science Perspective
  • Sarah E. Duffy, Michele I. Feist
  • Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023
  • Across languages, time tends to be understood in terms of space. For instance, we might think of time as an unstoppable train heading towards us when we hear 'holidays are coming', or we might imagine time as a landscape that we move across as we 'approach the moment of truth'. In this pioneering book, Duffy and Feist bring together research from across disciplines to provide a more nuanced understanding of what metaphor is and how it underpins our conceptualizations of time. Illustrated with a wide range of authentic examples from natural language, the book offers a holistic understanding of metaphors for time, encompassing the varied ways in which people draw on spatial experiences, as well as the broader variety of 'human experience' on an individual level. In doing so, it highlights the importance of variation across cultures, across contexts, and across individuals for metaphoric conceptualization.

Page 1 of 11