Emancipatory Pragmatics

Abstract

AbstractEmancipatory Pragmatics focuses on the description of linguistic practices in languages other than Euro‐American majority languages in an effort to integrate diverse voices into the field of pragmatics. Emancipatory Pragmatics recognizes the contributions of well‐known theoretical perspectives such as Grice's theory of conversational implicature, speech act theory, politeness theory, and relevance theory, but it also seeks to establish theories of linguistic practice not based primarily on English and other Euro‐American languages. As an example, this entry describes current work in Emancipatory Pragmatics that utilizesba‐theory as an approach to context. Using pronoun usage in Japanese, Hawaiian, and English as an example, the entry illustrates how such an approach can inform understanding of the dialogic processes through which categorical distinctions emerge in social interaction.