Methods in pragmatics

While there are a multitude of different methodological and disciplinary approaches that are drawn upon in pragmatics, at the risk of gross oversimplification, we venture to divide them into three broad groups. The first involves formal analysis, where the analyst attempts to generate an ordered, theoretical account of pragmatic phenomena. Formal analysis has traditionally been carried out at the utterance level of instances of language use accessed through introspection, although more recently it has also involved analysis of naturally occurring language use. Much of the work in philosophical pragmatics comes under the guise of formal analysis. The second involves observational analysis, where analysts undertake systematic examination of instances of language in use vis-à-vis particular contextual variables. Observational analysis is often undertaken at the utterance level, and instances of language use are sometimes elicited rather than occurring naturally, especially in experimental pragmatics work. However, observational analysis can also involve large tracts of naturally occurring data, or what are more commonly termed corpora, in the emerging field of corpus pragmatics. Some approaches, such as cognitive pragmatics, on the other hand, draw from both formal and observational analyses. Finally, the third broad type involves interpretive analysis, where the analyst attempts to tease out what pragmatic phenomena arising in particular, situated occasions of language use mean for those participants. Interpretive analysis generally involves recourse to naturally occurring stretches of talk. Work in discursive and phenomenological pragmatics tends to come under the guise of interpretive analysis.

While integrative pragmatics might seem, on the surface, to favor the broad, interpretive grouping, our view is that all three broad methodological approaches, and associated disciplinary groundings, are valid. It all depends, in the end, on the questions being asked by the analyst, as Jucker (2009) rather nicely argues in relation to research on speech acts. To this end, we have made reference in some courses – at least as much as possible given the obvious constraints of this being a single volume – to various different types of studies that draw from formal, observational and interpretive approaches to pragmatics. Our coverage of these approaches and methods may not be quite as even as we might have hoped for, but omissions, where they are perceived, should not be taken as neglecting the import of such studies, but as simply reflecting the constraints where the primary focus is on developing an account of pragmatic phenomena. The complex issues that are inevitably raised when attempting to discuss various methods and disciplinary approaches in pragmatics is clearly deserving in its own right (see Culpeper, Haugh and Terkourafi in preparation).