Abstract
The reader will find here a very much needed compilation covering a broad range of current topics in pragmatic development research. It presents cutting-edge research in the respective domains and a number of innovative accounts for specific phenomena such as those by Callanan and Siegel on the acquisition of the principle of conventionality or Filippova on the development of irony.
The introduction is clearly and lively. It accomplishes the task of knitting together all these different strands of research to present an idea of ‘the big picture’. What I really liked is how the editor refrains from even trying to claim comprehensiveness and instead – very openly – writes about the notorious difficulties in defining pragmatics, which every colleague in the field will know very well.
In the introduction, Matthews suggests seven thematic foci, around which the chapters are clustered more or less closely and I will follow this suggestion in my review:
1. ‘Pragmatic foundations’ focuses on infancy research, covered in part or whole by the next five chapters. The section starts with a very clear and concise overview over the pre-linguistic foundations of communication (Stephens & Matthews, Chapter 2). The authors draw on classic as well as up-to-date literature in order to present the caregiver’s and the infant’s contribution from birth to nine months, followed by what is known about infants initiating and responding to joint attention and intention understanding.
In the next chapter, Cameron-Faulkner does a great job in re-introducing Speech Act Theory and its difficulties and potential benefits for studies in child language development (Chapter 3). The following two chapters cover the intricacies of structuring conversation via turn-taking and sequence organization. Casillas (Chapter 4) describes existing research on how children acquire the structural conventions of conversational turns in terms of temporal and semantic contingency, asking and answering questions and the ability to make timely responses. While Filipi (Chapter 5) provides hands-on examples of how the close attention to detail in conversation analysis might shed new light on children’s ability to co-create and manage conversations as social interactions.
The final chapter (Moore, Chapter 6) is a philosophical one and offers a very different perspective. Moore analyzes a variety of communication accounts. He starts with the Gricean account of intentional communication and its problems when brought to bear on the communication of preverbal children, covers Relevance Theory, Pedagogy Theory, the Goméz-Moore action based account, and an account of Expressive Communication – in each case carving out precisely their respective strengths and shortcomings.
2. ‘Moving to the conventional’, in the sense that children have to get a grasp of language specific words and grammatical constructions, features Clark’s (2007) well-known account of the principles of convention and contrast (Chapter 7) as powerful word learning tools. This view is side-guarded and broadened in the next chapter by Callanan and Siegel (Chapter 8), who provide a socio-cultural based account on the acquisition of conventional behavior in general and the development of an understanding of conventionality, scaffolded by parental marking behavior. Last but not least, the section contains a wonderful chapter by Grassmann (Chapter 9), wherein she integrates a wealth of research on the pragmatic information children use for word learning and presents it in a structure of rare clarity. What is notably missing in this section is a chapter on the pragmatic accounts of the acquisition of grammatical constructions.
3. ‘A focus on reference’ is opened by a comprehensive review (Graf & Davies, Chapter 10) of the production and comprehension of referring expressions in typically-developing children and children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In the next chapter, Katsos presents and critically discusses current accounts of scalar implicature development (Chapter 11). He convincingly explains why most previous studies might actually underestimate children’s competence with scalar implicatures and presents a novel account that draws on early socio-pragmatic abilities and incorporates the principle of contrast. The following chapter (Ito, Chapter 12) deals in detail with the prosodic properties of referential expressions specifically in children beyond toddler age. As the notion of reference is ubiquitous in communication, so is the potential range of topics as well and the selection gives an impression of the complexity of the topic.
4. ‘Non-literal language use’, in a sense, is the most coherent section as it covers phenomena of playful language use like humor (Hoicka, Chapter 13), metaphor (Pouscoulous, Chapter 14), and irony (Filippova, Chapter 15). The chapter by Hoicka does a great job in linking humor and pragmatics. It gives a short introduction to different theories of humor and then reviews research on humor comprehension, production (also in children with ASD), and its origin in early infant–caregiver interaction. In the chapter on metaphor, Pouscoulous argues for a new look at early metaphorical abilities. She provides grounds for the assumption that a child can carry through the inferences necessary for metaphor understanding and production by the time she/he starts to speak. Irony, in turn, seems to be acquired truly with some delay. Filippova’s chapter is split into a part on discourse irony and a part on situational irony. By reviewing the nature of the factors that play into competence with irony (e.g. semantic and cultural knowledge, situational valence, elaborated assessment of the speaker’s mind) it becomes clear why this might be a later achievement.
5. ‘Organizing and marking information’ comprises two interesting chapters with a cross-cultural perspective. Carmiol and Sparks (Chapter 16) compare Latino and Western cultures regarding the structure of narration. They focus on how culture organizes and gives meaning to interaction between caregivers and children and leads to consistently differing cultural patterns in narrative development. Matsui (Chapter 17) discusses culturally different expressions of evidentiality and certainty as major indicators of reliability of socially transmitted information. She reviews existing naturalistic and experimental data in different cultures and lays out the language–cognition interface.
6. ‘Perspectives on pragmatic development’ leaves the realm of specific phenomena to cover some important overarching topics like the cross-cultural approach in general (Küntay, Nakamura, & Sen, Chapter 18) and the assessment of typical and atypical pragmatic development (Norbury, Chapter 19 and O’Neill, Chapter 20). The chapter by Küntay et al. is a precious piece of condensed knowledge that covers cross-cultural findings for (1) nonverbal interaction, (2) referential communication, (3) speech acts and politeness, and (4) extended discourse, i.e. conflict. Norbury introduces the reader to the state of the art of clinical aspects of pragmatic development. Most importantly, she discusses the new DSM-V criteria for Social Communication Disorder. O’Neill then focuses on the growing importance of assessing children’s pragmatic abilities and the inherent difficulties of this task which are posed by the above-mentioned problems of definition and lack of global theory as well as notions of ‘appropriateness’, cross-cultural differences, and the challenge to establish concurrent validity.
7. ‘Discussion’ closes the book with a chapter by Budwig (Chapter 21), where she considers how far the field has come and what is still missing: an integration of findings, a holistic theoretical framework, interdisciplinary awareness, and more connection to the applied sciences like education. In this concluding chapter, Budwig stresses the desideratum of a broad theoretical underpinning that would provide grounds for a taxonomy of all the different phenomena under consideration. Though many of the existing – partial – theoretical accounts are presented in the respective chapters (e.g. Speech Act Theory in Chapter 3 or Relevance Theory in Chapter 6), a broader discussion of the overall theoretical framework would have complemented this collection nicely.
To sum up, the volume provides a very helpful overview and summary of a broad range of research topics. For beginners in the field it provides a superb starting point and introduction, but also the experienced reader will find new insights and – above all – inspiration for points of connection and future research.