Reflexive Language Reported Speech and Metapragmatics [Hardcover]

These innovative essays represent a critique of those researchers in the humanities and social sciences who fail to take language seriously.This volume examines the nature and significance of the reflexive capacity of natural language, its ability to represent its own structure and use through reported speech and explicit statements about language use (metapragmatics).This volume examines the nature and significance of the reflexive capacity of natural language, its ability to represent its own structure and use through reported speech and explicit statements about language use (metapragmatics).This volume examines the nature and significance of the reflexive capacity of natural language, its ability to represent its own structure and use through reported speech and explicit statements about language use (metapragmatics). Included are theoretical overviews, case studies of the forms and functioning of reflexive language, and explorations of the broad importance of reflexive language for research in the humanities and social sciences. These innovative essays, many by internationally known researchers, effectively critique research in the human disciplines that fails to take language seriously. It should elicit widespread attention and debate.Part I. Theoretical Foundations: Part II. The Relation of Form and Function in Reflexive Language: Part III. Text, Context, and the Cultural Functions of Reflexive Language: Part IV. Interpretation, Reported Speech, and Metapragmatics in the Western Tradition. ...[the] high quality of most of the papers in the volume, and Lucy's excellent job of framing and summarizing them, make it a uselful resource for linguists interested in issues of reported speech, code-switching, genre-identification, indexicality, authority in language, literary voice, or the broader theortical implications of the notion of metalanguage . Language ...the volume offers something for linguists of many tastes; the editor deserves special credit for makilCç