This study examines proposals made during planning talk--a speech act that has received little attention in previous literature--to determine the applicability of the stages of second language (L2) pragmatic development posited by Kasper and Rose (2002). Although Kasper and Rose suggest that formulas play a prominent role in L2 pragmatic…

A discussion of semantic interpretation argues that contradictions such as "Sue's both right and wrong" are assigned consistent propositional interpretations such as "Sue's partly right and partly wrong" by universal semantic principles, which obviates analysis via conversational maxims and implicatures. First, it is shown from investigation of…

Four conference papers on discourse are included. In "How Context Contributes to the Interpretation of Temporal Expressions," Carlota S. Smith provides a summary analysis of the temporal interpretation of English sentences. Many sentences are shown to be semantically incomplete; it is argued that information from neighboring sentences is…

Attention to the language practices of school-age children and teenagers is essential for a complete understanding of how language use can vary in the social construction of everyday activity across the life span. This book examines a wide variety of language practices using data from naturally occurring recorded talk and careful observation of…