Year: 2018
Type: reference-entry
Abstract: Cross‐cultural pragmatics denotes a field of study that concerns itself with how language acquires meaning through context and through its sociocultural embedding. Because meaning is not inherent in the utterances we produce, messages have to be interpreted drawing on contextual information, the dynamics between the speaker and his/her interactional partner(s), and the common knowledge that we share with our interlocutors. What is pertinent to the study of cross‐cultural pragmatics is, therefore, the notion of speaker intention and the inferences interlocutors draw from them. Speaker intention and listener interpretation are rarely fully aligned and the chances of deriving meaning in line with what was intended decreases with the increase in cultural disparities. To enhance our ability to understand cultural differences and better enable sojourners and learners of foreign languages to deal appropriately with communication in their target languages, cross‐cultural pragmatics explores culturally motivated patterns of interactional preferences in certain contextual settings.
Author: Stefanie Stadler
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4246738831