This edited volume on contextualism and pragmatics is interdisciplinary in character and contains contributions from linguistics, cognitive science and socio-pragmatics. Going beyond conventional contextual matters of truth-conditions and pragmatic intrusion, this text deals with a variety of issues including hyperbole, synonymy, reference, argumentation, schizophrenia, rationality, morality, silence and clinical pragmatics. Contributions also address the semantics/pragmatics debate and show to what extent the theory of contextualism can be applied.  This volume is based on a unitary...

This book explores the construction of agreement in the argumentative process, aiming to investigate how the activation of shared knowledge, values and beliefs leads to the creation of a common ground between the speaker and the audience in the pursuit of persuasion. In the first part of the book, the authors examine agreement from a historical and theoretical perspective, setting in relation major ancient and contemporary approaches to argumentation, with special regard for the notions of ethos, objects of agreement, starting points and topoi, all with a focus on their deployment in...