The pragmatics of interlanguage

Abstract

Research in pragmatics has evolved from its beginnings with different theoretical focuses, interfacing with cognition, communication and formal grammar, and thus making its definition quite difficult. Kasper (1996) defines the pragmatics of interlanguage as the “study of pragmatic knowledge in second language acquisition”. O'Keeffe, Clancy, and Adolphs (2011) address pragmatics as the study of meaning interpretation. Perna, Goldnadel and Molsing (2016), admit that pragmatics has a phenomenological breadth that was sometimes considered undesirable. Nowadays, however, pragmatics finds itself in a very significant place within linguistics, because it presents an expressive amount of studies that are in external interface with Cognitive Psychology and Anthropology, in addition to presenting strict connections in its interface with Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Semantics. The present edition of Letras de Hoje aims to show the breadth of research on themes related to the acquisition of pragmatic aspects in the context of additional language and L1.