Cover not available
Part of
Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual
Edited by Jef Verschueren and Jan-Ola Östman
[Handbook of Pragmatics M2] 2022
► pp. 349–373

Contrastive pragmatics

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Pragmatics and variability
  • 2.Contrastive pragmatics: Early formulations
  • 3.Contrastive pragmatics and its many guises
    • 3.1Contrastive speech act studies
    • 3.2Contrastive discourse and conversation analysis
    • 3.3Contrastive textology
    • 3.4Contrastive rhetoric
    • 3.5Contrastive genre studies
    • 3.6Contrastive sociolinguistics
    • 3.7Pragmatic aspects of contrastive ‘grammar’
    • 3.8Contrasting other pragmatic phenomena
  • 4.Methodological questions
  • 5.Where methodology meets theory
  • 6.Perspectives: Towards pragmatic typology
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m2.con18
References (116)
Aijmer, Karin
(ed.) 2009 Contrastive Pragmatics. Special issue of Languages in Contrast 9(1).Google Scholar
Anderson, L., G. Aston, R. Brodine, A. Ciliberti, L. Gavioli, S. E. George, G. Mansfield, L. Merlini Barbaresi, G. Tucker, J. Vincent and D. Zorzi Caló
1990 The Pixi corpora: Bookshop encounters in English and Italian. (Edited by L. Gavioli and G. Mansfield.) Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice.Google Scholar
Arnovick, Leslie K
1999 Diachronic Pragmatics: Seven Case Studies in English Illocutionary Development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Asscher, Omri
2010 “A model for Hebrew translation of British humor: Amplification and overstatement.” Target 22(2): 237–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aston, Guy
1988 “Introduction.” In Aston (ed.), 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 1988 Negotiating Service: Studies in the Discourse of Bookshop Encounters. Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona
1996 “Corpus-based translation studies: The challenges that lie ahead.” In Terminology, LSP and Translation, ed. by Harold Somers, 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca and Sandra J. Harris
1997 Managing Language: The Discourse of Corporate Meetings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barnlund, D. and S. Araki
1985 “Intercultural encounters: The management of compliments by Japanese and Americans.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 18(1): 9–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhasin, Neeta
2008 “’American Humor’ versus ‘Indian Humor’: Indentity, ethos, and rhetorical situation.” In Rhetoric in Detail: Discourse Analyses of Rhetorical Talk and Text, ed. by Barbara Johnstone and Christopher Eisenhart, 173–193. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard and Joel Sherzer
(eds.) 1974 Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking (second edition 1989) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana and Elite Olshtain
1984 “Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP).” Applied Linguistics 5(3): 196–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House and Gabriele Kasper
1989 “Investigating cross-cultural pragmatics: An introductory overview.” In Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (eds.), 1–34.Google Scholar
(eds.) 1989 Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Boas, Hans C
2010 “Comparing constructions across languages.” In Boas (ed.), 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2010 Contrastive Studies in Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: john Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson
1978 “Universals of language use: Politeness phenomena.” In Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, ed. by Esther N. Goody, 56–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Caers, Eric
2008 A Contrastive Study of Reporting in The Guardian and The Economist: Metaphors in the Transition from Keynesian Economics to Monetarism. University of Antwerp PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew
1998 Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H
1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Connor, Ulla, Ed Nagelhout and William V. Rozycki
(eds.) 2008 Contrastive Rhetoric: Reaching to Intercultural Rhetoric. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cornelis, Louise
1996 “English and Dutch: The passive difference.” Language Sciences 18(1–2): 247–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coulmas, Florian
1981 “Poison to your soul: Thanks and apologies contrastively viewed.” In Conversational Routine, ed. by F. Coulmas, 69–91. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daikuhara, M
1986 “A study of compliments from a cross-cultural perspective: Japanese vs. American English.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 2(2): 103–135.Google Scholar
Delin, Judy, Anthony Hartley, and Donia Scott
1996 “Towards a contrastive pragmatics: Syntactic choice in English and French instructions.” Language Sciences 18 (3–4): 897–931. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark and Nick Enfield
2015 “Other-initiated repair across languages: Towards a typology of conversational structures.” Open Linguistics 1: 96–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Pietro, Robert J
1971 Language Structures in Contrast. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro
1988 “Intentions, language, and social action in a Samoan context.” Journal of Pragmatics 12: 13–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enkvist, Nils Erik
1984 “Contrastive linguistics and text linguistics.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 45–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Færch, Claus and Gabriele Kasper
1984 “ Ja und? – og hva’ så? – a contrastive discourse analysis of gambits in German and Danish.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 69–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. César
2008 Politeness in Mexico and the United States. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feng, Haiying
2008 “Genre-based study of research grant proposals in China.” In Ulla Connor, et al. (eds.), 63–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2009 “Challenges in contrast.” In Aijmer (ed.), 73–97.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J
1984 “Remarks on contrastive pragmatics.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 119–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fisiak, Jacek
(ed.) 1984 Contrastive Linguistics: Prospects and Problems. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Dahl and Trodd Kinn
2006 Academic Voices: Across Languages and Disciplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fukushima, Saeko
1996 “Request strategies in British English and Japanese.” In Jaszczolt and Turner (eds.), 671–688. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gleason, H.A
1968 “Contrastive analysis in discourse structure.” In Report of the 19th Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies, ed. by J. E. Alatis, 39–63. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J
1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J. and Dell Hymes
(eds.) 1964 The Ethnography of Communication. Special issue of American Anthropologist 66 (6, part 2).Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. and Stephen C. Levinson
(eds.) 1996 Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hartmann, R. R.K
1980 Contrastive Textology: Comparative Discourse Analysis in Applied Linguistics. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag.Google Scholar
Hauser, Stefan and Martin Luginbühl
(eds.) 2012 Contrastive Media Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hellinger, Marlis and Ulrich Ammon
(eds.) 1996 Contrastive Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heltai, Pál
2005 “Explicitation, redundancy, ellipsis and translation.” In New trends in translation studies: In honour of Kinga Klaudy, ed. by K. Károly and Á. Fóris, 45–74. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar
2008 “Explicitation, redundancy, ellipsis, processing and translation.” In Translation and meaning 8, ed. by M. Thelen and B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 245–254. Maastricht: Zuyd.Google Scholar
Herbert, Robert K
1989 “The ethnography of English compliments and compliment responses: A contrastive sketch.” In Oleksy (ed.), 3–35.Google Scholar
Hinnenkamp, Volker
1995 “Intercultural communication.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Galia
2011 “Explicitations and other types of shifts in the translation of irony and humor.” Target 23(2): 178–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane
1982a “Opening and closing phrases in English and German dialogues.” Grazer Linguistische Studien 16: 52–83.Google Scholar
1982b “Conversational strategies in German and English dialogues.” In Error Analysis, Contrastive Linguistics, and Second Language Learning (special issue of IRAL), ed. by G. Nickel and D. Nehts, 136–150. Heidelberg: Groos.Google Scholar
1984 “Some methodological problems and perspectives in contrastive discourse analysis.” Applied Linguistics 5(3): 245–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985 “Contrastive discourse analysis and universals in language use.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 20: 5–14.Google Scholar
Janicki, Karol
1979 “Contrastive sociolinguistics: Some methodological considerations.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 10: 33–40.Google Scholar
1984 “Contrastive sociolinguistics reconsidered.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 18: 15–29.Google Scholar
1991 “A brief falsificationist look at contrastive sociolinguistics.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 26: 5–10.Google Scholar
Jaszczolt, Katarzyna
1995 “Contrastive analysis.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaszczolt, Katarzyna and Ken Turner
(eds.) 1996 Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics (Vol. I: Meanings and Representations, Vol. II: Discourse Strategies). Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H
(ed.) 1995 Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Robert B
1966 “Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education.” Language Learning 16: 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele
1995 “Interlanguage pragmatics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele and Shoshana Blum-Kulka
(eds.) 1993 Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keenan Ochs, Elinor
1976 "The universality of conversational postulates." Language in Society 5: 67–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kitagawa, C
1980 “Saying ‘yes’ in Japanese.” Journal of Pragmatics 4: 105–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kopaczyk, Joanna and Andreas H. Jucker
(eds.) 2013 Communities of Practice in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán
2015 Where Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kraft, Bettina and Ronald Geluykens
(eds.) 2007 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics of Interlanguage English. München: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Kranich, Svenja
2016 Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lado, Robert
1957 Linguistics across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin T. and Sachiko Ide
(eds.) 2005 Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
le Pair, Rob
1996 “Spanish request strategies: A cross-cultural analysis from an intercultural perspective.” In Jaszczolt and Turner (eds.), 651–670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara
1989 “Praising and complimenting.” In Oleksy (ed.), 73–100.Google Scholar
Liao, Chao-chih and Mary I. Bresnahan
1996 “A contrastive pragmatic study on American English and Mandarin refusal strategies.” In Jaszczolt and Turner (eds.), 703–727. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liebe-Harkort, Marie-Louise
1984 “Contrastive pragmatics.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 19: 23–28.Google Scholar
Marín-Arrese, Juana I
1996 “To die, to sleep: A contrastive study of metaphors for death and dying in English and Spanish.” Language Sciences 18(1–2): 37–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Yoshiko
1988 “Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese.” Journal of Pragmatics 12: 403–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mauri, Caterina and Johan van der Auwera
2012 “Connectives.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt, 377–401. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maynard, Senko K
1990 “Conversation management in contrast: Listener response in Japanese and American English.” Journal of Pragmatics 14(3): 397–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996 “Contrastive rhetoric: A case of nominalization in Japanese and English discourse.” Language Sciences 18(3–4): 933–946. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mortelmans, Tanja
1994 “Understanding German dative verbs and their English and Dutch equivalents.” Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 78: 1–124.Google Scholar
Nir, Bracha and Ruth A. Berman
2010 “Complex syntax as a window on contrastive rhetoric.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 744–765. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Near R. and Delia Chiaro
(eds.) 2011 Humor in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oleksy, Wiesław
1984 “Towards pragmatic contrastive analysis.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 349–364. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 1989 Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Purves, Alan C
(ed.) 1988 Writing Across Languages: Issues in Contrastive Rhetoric. Newbury Park: Sage.Google Scholar
Riley, Philipp
1979 “Towards a contrastive pragmalinguistics.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 10: 57–78.Google Scholar
Roldán-Riejos, Ana
2016 “Exploring specific differeces: A cross-linguistic study of English and Spanish civil engineering metaphors.” In Exploring Discourse Strategies in Social and Cognitive Interaction: Multimodal and Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, ed. by Manuela Romano and M. Dolores Porto, 187–213. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle Z
1982 “The things we do with words: Ilongot speech acts and speech act theory in philosophy.” Language in Society 11: 203–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sajavaara, Kari
1977 “Contrastive linguistics past and present, and a communicative approach.” Jyväskylä Contrastive Studies 4: 9–30.Google Scholar
Sajavaara, Kari, Jaakko Lehtonen and Liisa Korpimies
1980 “The methodology and practice of contrastive discourse analysis.” Jyväskylä Contrastive Studies 5:27–55.Google Scholar
Schneider, Klaus P
2010 “Variational pragmatics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Klaus P. and Anne Barron
(eds.) 2008 Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R
1969 Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Senft, Gunter
2008 “The case: The Trobriand Islanders vs H.P. Grice: Kilivila and the Gricean maxims of quality and manner.” Anthropos 103: 139–147.Google Scholar
Shao, Qingchen, Zhenzhen Wang and Zhijie Hao
2012 “Contrastive studies of pun in figures of speech.” In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer and Information Applications. Paris: Atlantis Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, Yang
2005 A Contrastive Analysis of Humorous Expressions in English and Chinese from a Rhetorical Perspective. Shanghai Maritime University, Master’s thesis.Google Scholar
Suárez, Lorena and Ana I. Moreno
2008 “The rhetorical structure of academic book reviews of literature.” In Ulla Connor, et al. (eds.), 147–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szwedek, Aleksander
1984 “Some problems of contrastive analysis and text linguistics.” In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 419–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite, Susana Doval Suárez and Elsa González Álvarez
(eds.) 2013 Contrastive Discourse Analysis: Functional and Corpus Perspectives. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Thomas, Jenny
1981 Pragmatic Failure. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Lancaster.Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan
2012 “From contrastive linguistics to linguistic typology.” Languages in Contrast 12(1): 69–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verschueren, Jef
1984 "Linguistics and crosscultural communication." Language in Society 13: 489–509. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985 What People Say they Do with Words: Prolegomena to an Empirical-Conceptual Approach to Linguistic Action. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
1996 "Contrastive ideology research: Aspects of a pragmatic methodology." Language Sciences 18:3/4.589–603. (Also in Katarzyna Jaszczolt & Ken Turner (eds.), Contrastive semantics and pragmatics (2 vols.). Pergamon.) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 Understanding Pragmatics. London: Edward Arnold / New York: Oxford University Press. (Free download at [URL].)Google Scholar
2012 Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wachtel, Tom
1979 “A question of imperatives.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 10. 5–33.Google Scholar
Walker, James A
2013 “Variation analysis.” In Research Methods in Linguistics, ed. by Robert J. Podesva and Devyani Sharma, 440–459. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Wei
2008 “Newspaper commentaries on terrorism in China and Australia: A contrastive genre study.” In Ulla Connor, et al. (eds.), 169–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wikberg, Kay
1984 “On questions in English and Swedish.” Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 19: 29–39.Google Scholar
Wolfson, Nessa, Thomas Marmor and Steve Jones
1989 “Problems in the comparison of speech acts across cultures”. In Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), 174–196.Google Scholar
Zorzi Caló, D., R. Brodine, L. Gavioli and G. Aston
1990 "Opening and closing service encounters: Some differences between English and Italian", In La rappresentazione verbale e iconica: valori estetici e funzionali, ed. by C. De Stasio, M. Gotti and R. Bonadei. Milano: Guerini. 445–458.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by 2 other publications

Muthmainnah, Ahmad Al Yakin, Muhammad Massyat, Luís Cardoso & Andi Asrifan
2024. Determining the Skills Necessary for Online Seller–Buyer Communication to Avoid Frictional Unemployment Due to Skill Gaps. In Contemporary Challenges in Social Science Management: Skills Gaps and Shortages in the Labour Market [Contemporary Studies in Economic and Financial Analysis, ], ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Saleem, Aisha & Tahir Saleem
2023. Pragmatic transfer in congratulation strategies of Punjabi EFL learners: Social power in focus. Ampersand 10 ► pp. 100103 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.