An accessible introduction to the key topics in theoretical pragmatics, including Grice, speech acts, relevance theory, and politeness.

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. What is pragmatics?; 2. Speaker's meaning; 3. Speech act theory; 4. Gricean pragmatics; 5. Pragmatics beyond grice; 6. Relevance-theoretic pragmatics; 7. Applying relevance theory; 8. Figurative language; 9. Politeness; 10. Researching pragmatics; Glossary; References; Index.

Kate Scott is a Senior Lecturer and School Director of Research at Kingston University London, and has over ten years' experience of teaching English language, linguistics, and pragmatics at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is the author of Pragmatics Online (2022) and Referring Expressions, Pragmatics, and Style (2019), and co-editor of Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation (2019, with Carston and Clark).