Libro Pragmatica

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Clinical Pragmatics

Many children and adults experience significant breakdown in the use of language. The resulting pragmatic disorders present a considerable barrier to effective communication. This book is the first critical examination of the current state of our knowledge of pragmatic disorders and provides a comprehensive overview of the mainconcepts and theories in pragmatics. It examines the full range of pragmatic disorders that occur in children and adults and discusses how they are assessed and treated by clinicians. Louise Cummings attempts to integrate the fields of pragmatics, language pathology and cognitive science by examining the ways in which pragmatics can make a useful contribution to debates about cognitive theories ofautism. The reader is encouraged to think in a critical fashion about how clinicians, experimentalists and theorists deal with pragmatic issues. l ou i se cu mm in g s is Reader in Linguistics in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University.

Clinical Pragmatics
Louise Cummings

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, SãoPaulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521888455 © Louise Cummings 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, noreproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13 ISBN-13

978-0-511-54018-9 978-0-521-88845-5

eBook (EBL) hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does notguarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In fond memory of my grandparents Nan & Bob Cummings Ruby & James Stewart

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements 1 Clinical pragmatics: theory and practice
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Introduction The scope of clinical pragmatics The emergence of clinical pragmatics Concepts and theories in pragmatics 1.4.1 Speechacts 1.4.2 Implicatures 1.4.3 Presuppositions 1.4.4 Deixis 1.4.5 Context 1.4.6 Non-literal language 1.4.7 Conversation 1.4.8 Discourse 1.4.9 Relevance theory 1.4.10 Cognition and pragmatics 1.5 The multidisciplinary nature of clinical pragmatics 1.6 Primary and secondary pragmatic disorders 1.7 Pragmatic deficits and pragmatic preservation Notes

page ix xi 1
1 4 9 12 13 14 16 17 18 21 21 23 2426 29 32 34 35

2 A survey of developmental pragmatic disorders
2.1 Introduction 2.2 Developmental language disorder 2.3 Autistic spectrum disorder 2.4 Emotional and behavioural disorders 2.5 Mental retardation Notes

40
40 42 53 60 67 76

3 A survey of acquired pragmatic disorders
3.1 Introduction 3.2 Left-hemisphere damage 3.3 Right-hemisphere damage 3.4 Schizophrenia 3.5 Traumaticbrain injury 3.6 Neurodegenerative disorders Notes

88
88 90 96 100 104 108 112

vii

viii

Contents

4 The contribution of pragmatics to cognitive theories of autism
4.1 Introduction 4.2 Cognitive theories of autism 4.2.1 Theory of mind (ToM) theory 4.2.2 Weak central coherence (WCC) theory 4.2.3 Executive function (EF) theory 4.3 The relationship between cognitive theories 4.4 Thecriterion of pragmatic adequacy 4.5 A pragmatic challenge to cognitive theories 4.6 The validity of pragmatic adequacy Notes

118
118 118 119 121 122 123 125 128 134 135

5 The cognitive substrates of acquired pragmatic disorders
5.1 Introduction 5.2 Pragmatic theory 5.2.1 Relevance theory 5.2.2 Modular pragmatics 5.3 Cognitive theory 5.3.1 Theory of mind theories 5.3.2 Executive function...