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Cutting, J. (2015). Pragmatics: A resource book for students. London/New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-53436-9 (hbk), 978-0-415-53437-6 (pbk). xiv + 298 pp. Accompanying website: http://www.routledge.com/cw/cutting
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Reviewed by Marta Carretero (Complutense University, Madrid, Spain)
Joan Cuttings Pragmatics: A resource book for students (henceforth Pragmatics) is the third edition of the book called Pragmatics and discourse: A resource book for students in the two previous editions, published in 2002 and 2008. As the shortening of the title indicates, the book has been reorganized to focus solely on pragmatics (p. i). However, the number of topics covered is not smaller: a unit on Conversation has been deleted, but two units, Critical Discourse Analysis and Intercultural Pragmatics, have been added; and the rest of the units cover roughly the same topics. The new edition is accompanied by the website of free additional resources whose URL is indicated in the heading of the review.
Pragmatics, like the two previous editions, is a Routledge introduction. These introductions assume no previous knowledge of linguistics and are structured as exi-texts, which have a two-dimensional structure. The vertical dimension consists of four sections: A) Introduction, which provides an overview of the eld and introduces key concepts; B) Development, aimed at deepening the knowledge previously gained; C) Exploration, which provides language for guided research and encourages students to embark on projects based on the collection and analysis of authentic data; D) Extension, which provides readings by leading academics and encourages criticism by posing questions and inviting students to check theories and ideas with language data that they might gather. The horizontal dimension consists of eight units, each of which is treated in the A), B), C), and D) sections. Units 1 to 4 concern traditional issues on pragmatics: context (Unit 1), speech acts (Unit 2), Grices Cooperative Principle and Maxims (Unit 3), and politeness and impoliteness (Unit 4). The last four units are devoted to more recently incorporated trends in the eld of pragmatics: corpora and communities of practice (Unit 5), Critical Discourse Analysis (Unit 6), intercultural pragmatics (Unit 7), and pragmatics and language teaching and learning (Unit 8). This two-dimensional structure makes possible a horizontal reading, from section A) to section D), straight from beginning...