Introduction

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book provides a journey through the more recent developments of pragmatics, considering both its philosophical and linguistic nature. This first volume is devoted to the theoretical models developed from a philosophical perspective, including both the newest advances of the classical theories and approaches, and pioneering and interdisciplinary ideas proposed to face the challenges of the fields and areas of practice and analysis. The topics investigated, which include implicatures, reference, presupposition, speech acts, metaphor, relevance, and common ground, represent the core of the state of the art in philosophical pragmatics. Research on these matters have been continuously changing the way that we can look at them. This book serves as a collection of works from the most eminent authors who represent the theoretical developments of the approaches that defined this field, together with the new philosophical insights coming from more applied disciplines such as argumentation, discourse analysis, or linguistics. The combination of these two perspectives provides a unique outline of the current research in pragmatics.