Pragmatics & Cognition
Main information
Pragmatics & Cognition publishes articles which forge links between communication and related human abilities and behaviours, from the perspective of cognitive science. The journal's leading principle is that the proper understanding of communication, mental activity and interpersonal relations requires an intensive and thoughtful exchange of views across a range of disciplines and perspectives. This interdisciplinary approach generates an understanding of the mental processes involved in the production and understanding of communicative acts of various forms and across contexts. Linguistics, in particular pragmatics and semantics, neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, experimental psychology, are the main areas of language study brought together by the journal.
Pragmatics & Cognition focuses on meaning, acquisition and development of communicative abilities, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation, epistemic vigilance, evolution of language and communication.
Alongside full-scale articles and book reviews, the journal publishes high quality thematic special issues in innovative areas of international scholarship which establish a niche in contemporary research. Both experimental and theoretical contributions are welcome.
Reviews
Pragmatics & Cognition offers a venue for reviews of recent contributions in the field of pragmatics and related disciplines in cognitive science. Reviews should offer a critical discussion of a book and target an interdisciplinary audience of linguists, philosophers and psychologists.
We publish reviews in the following two formats.
1. Book symposia
Book symposia comprise two or three critical notices on a book together with the author's replies. Selected books for symposia typically address foundational questions in pragmatics and cognitive science, with the potential to foster interdisciplinary discussions. Contributions to book symposia are by invitation only and should not exceed 3000 words.
2. Book reviews
Book reviews offer a short and critical presentation of the content of a book and assess its contribution to the field. Book reviews should not exceed 2000 words. They are usually commissioned. Unsolicited reviews will not be considered. However, it is possible to submit proposals for book reviews to the Review Editor, Prof. Diana Mazzarella ([email protected]), who will evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.
Issues
Volume 31 (2024)
Volume 30 (2023)
Volume 29 (2022)
Volume 28 (2021)
Volume 27 (2020)
Volume 26 (2019)
Volume 25 (2018)
Volume 24 (2017)
Volume 23 (2016)
Volume 22 (2014)
Volume 21 (2013)
Volume 20 (2012)
Volume 19 (2011)
Volume 18 (2010)
Volume 17 (2009)
Volume 16 (2008)
Volume 15 (2007)
Volume 14 (2006)
Volume 13 (2005)
Volume 12 (2004)
Volume 11 (2003)
Volume 10 (2002) sp.issue
Volume 9 (2001)
Volume 8 (2000)
Volume 7 (1999)
Volume 6 (1998)
Volume 5 (1997)
Volume 4 (1996)
Volume 3 (1995)
Volume 2 (1994)
Volume 1 (1993)
Board
Subscription Info
General information about our electronic journals.
Subscription rates
All prices for print + online include postage/handling.
Online-only | Print + online | ||
---|---|---|---|
Volume 32 (2025): 2 issues; ca. 400 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
|
Volume 31 (2024): 2 issues; ca. 400 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Individuals may apply for a special online-only subscription rate of EUR
Private subscriptions are for personal use only, and must be pre-paid and ordered directly from the publisher.
Available back-volumes
Online-only | Print + online | ||
---|---|---|---|
Complete backset (Vols. 1‒30; 1993‒2023) |
74 issues; 14,800 pp. |
EUR 11,044.00 | EUR 11,686.00 |
Volume 30 (2023) | 2 issues; 400 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volumes 27‒29 (2020‒2022) | 2 issues; avg. 400 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 26 (2019) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 25 (2018) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 24 (2017) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 23 (2016) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 22 (2014) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volume 21 (2013) | 3 issues; 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volumes 13‒20 (2005‒2012) | 3 issues; avg. 600 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Volumes 1‒12 (1993‒2004) | 2 issues; avg. 400 pp. | EUR |
EUR |
Guidelines
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
General
For the benefit of production efficiency, the publisher and the editor ask you to follow the following submission guidelines strictly. Papers that do not follow these guidelines will be returned to the author.
Contributions should be consistent in their use of language and spelling. If you are not a native speaker of the language in which you have written your contribution, it is advised to have your text checked by a native speaker.
When submitting the final manuscript to the journal, please include: a one-paragraph abstract, approximately five keywords, a short professional biography of the author, and a current mailing address.
Electronic files
Files. Contributions should not exceed 10,000 words. Authors who are not native speakers of English are advised to have their paper checked by a native speaker before submission.
Please take care that you supply all the files, text as well as graphic files, used in the creation of the manuscript, and be sure to submit the final version of the manuscript. And please delete any personal comments so that these will not mistakenly be typeset and check that all files are readable.
File naming conventions. When naming your file please use the following convention: use the first three characters of the first author’s last name; if that name is Johnson, the file should be named JOH.DOC, JOH.WP5, etc. Do not use the three character extension for things other than the identification of the file type (not JOH.ART, JOH.REV). Figures can be named as follows JOH1.EPS, JOH2.TIF, JOH3.XLS, etc.
Software. Word (PC/Mac) is preferred. If you intend to use other word processing software, please contact the editors first.
Graphic files: Please supply figures as JPEG, Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) conversion in addition to the original creation files.
For graphics that are not available in digital format, such as photographs, spectrographs, etc., please provide sharp and clear prints (not photocopies) in black & white.
Lay-out
In order to facilitate smooth production, it is important that you follow the journal’s style for consistency.
Do not add running heads, implement full justification or hyphenation, or the exact margin settings as used by Benjamins in printing. It is sufficient to characterize elements such as examples, quotations, tables, headings etc. in the formatting in a clear and consistent way, so that they can be identified and formatted in the style of the journal.
Formatting that should be supplied by you is the formatting of references (see below) and font enhancements (such as italics, bold, caps, small caps, etc.) in the text.
Whatever formatting or style conventions are employed, please be consistent.
Tables and figures. All tables, trees and figures must fit within the following page size (if necessary, after – limited – reduction) and should still be legible at this size:
11.5 cm
(4.52”) x 19 cm (7.48”).
Suggested font setting for tables: Times Roman 10 pts (absolute minimum: 8 pts).
Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively, provided with appropriate captions and should be referred to in the main text in this manner, e.g., “in table 2”, but never like this “in the following table: “. Please indicate the preferred position of the table or figure in the text.
Running heads. Please do not include running heads with your article. However, in case of a long title please suggest a short one for the running head (max. 55 characters) on the cover sheet of your contribution.
Transliteration. Please transliterate into English any examples from languages that use a non-Latin script, using the appropriate transliteration system (ISO or LOC).
Symbols and special characters. In case you have no access to certain characters, we advise you to use a clear convention to mark these characters. You can use any other regular table to list the correspondences between your symbols and the required ones. If you use any phonetic characters, please mark these by the use of a character style if possible. This will enable us to retrieve those characters in your document.
Chapters and headings. Chapters or articles should be reasonably divided into sections and, if necessary, into subsections. Please mark the hierarchy of the subheadings as follows:
Heading 1 = bold, two lines space above and one line space below.
Heading 1.1 = normal, one line space above and one line space below.
Heading 1.1.1 = italics, one line space above, text on new line.
Heading 1.1.1.1 = italics, one line space above, text on new line. NB. This level is only to be used if absolutely indispensable.
Quotations: In the main text quotations should be given in double quotation marks. Quotations longer than 3 lines should be indented left and right, without quotations marks and with the appropriate reference to the source. They should be set off from the main text by a line of space above and below.
Listings: Should not be indented. If numbered, please number as follows:
1. ..................... or a. .......................
2. ..................... or b. .......................
Listings that run on with the main text can be numbered in parentheses: (1).............., (2)............., etc.
Examples and glosses
Examples should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.) in parentheses.
Examples in languages other than the language in which your contribution is written should be in italics with an approximate translation. Between the original and the translation, glosses can be added. This interlinear gloss gets no punctuation and no highlighting. For the abbreviations in the interlinear gloss, CAPS or small caps can be used, which will be converted to small caps by our typesetters in final formatting.
Please note that lines 1 and 2 are lined up through the use of spaces: it is essential that the number of elements in lines 1 and 2 match. If two words in the example correspond to one word in the gloss use a full stop to glue the two together (2a). Morphemes are seperated by hyphens (1, 2b).
Every next level in the example gets one indent/tab.
(1) Kare wa besutoseraa o takusan kaite-iru.
he TOP best-seller ACC many write-PERF
“He has written many best-sellers.’”
(2) a. Jan houdt.van Marie.
Jan loves Marie
“Jan loves Marie.”
b. Ed en Floor gaan samen-wonen.
Ed and Floor go together-live.INF
“Ed and Floor are going to live together.”
Notes
Notes should be kept to a minimum and should be submitted as numbered footnotes.
***Note: footnote indicators in the text should appear at the end of sentences and follow punctuation marks.
References
It is essential that the references are formatted to the specifications given in these guidelines, as these cannot be formatted automatically. This journal uses the style as described in the Unified Style sheet for Linguistics [http://linguistlist.org/pubs/tocs/JournalUnifiedStyleSheet2007.pdf]
References in the text: These should be as precise as possible, giving page references where necessary; for example (Clahsen 1991: 252).
References section: References should be listed first alphabetically and then chronologically. The section should include all (and only!) references that are actually mentioned in the text. Authors/contributors are encouraged to supply – with a reference, not instead of – the DOI if they happen to have that information readily available.
A note on capitalization in titles. Use capitalization of all lexical words for journal titles and capitalize only the first word (plus proper names and the first word after a colon) for book/dissertation titles and article/chapter titles. This is a useful diagnostic for discriminating between titles that are recurring and those that are not. The journal style for capitalization should also be applied to titles of book series.
Examples
Book:
Görlach, Manfred. 2003. English words abroad (Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 7). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Spear, Norman E. & Ralph R. Miller (eds.). 1981. Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Stewart, Thomas W., Jr. 2000. Mutation as morphology: Bases, stems, and shapes in Scottish Gaelic. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University dissertation.
Article (in book):
Adams, Clare A. & Anthony Dickinson. 1981. Actions and habits: Variation in associative representation during instrumental learning. In Norman E. Spear & Ralph R. Miller (eds.), Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms, 143–186. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Article (in journal):
Claes, Jeroen & Luis A. Ortiz López. 2011. Restricciones pragmáticas y sociales en la expresión de futuridad en el español de Puerto Rico [Pragmatic and social restrictions in the expression of the future in Puerto Rican Spanish]. Spanish in Context 8. 50–72.
Pedersen, Johan. 2005. The Spanish impersonal se-construction: Constructional variation and change. Constructions 1, http://www.constructions-online.de. (3 April, 2007.)
Tables, figures and plates
- Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and provided with concise captions (max. 240 characters).
All figures and tables should be referenced in the text, e.g. (see Figure 5). Please do not use relative indicators such as “see the table below”, or “in this table: ...”.
If the table or figure is not enclosed in the text file, please indicate the preferred position of the table or figure in the text by inserting a line “ Insert (file name) here” at the appropriate position. It will be placed either at the top or the
bottom of the page on which it is mentioned, or on the following page.
The journal will be printed in black & white. Before submitting the material for production, please check carefully whether all illustrations are still meaningful when printed in black & white. If the use of some color figures in your article has been agreed beforehand, please indicate clearly in a separate instruction which tables and/or figures are to be printed in color.
All tables, plates, and figures eventually have to fit the following text area, either portrait or landscape: 11,5 cm x 19 cm at 8 pt minimum.
Notes in tables and figures should not be regular footnotes. Please use a table note or a figure note as in the example below. Standard note indicators in tables are *, **, †, ‡. The note itself is then inserted directly below the table/figure.
In tables, keep shading to a functional minimum and for individual cells only.
Additional Style Guidance
Please use in-text citations, numbered footnotes, and works cited.
1. Please do not justify the right margin of your manuscript or the electronic version on disk. Leave a ragged right margin.
2. Please use British or American spellings and punctuation throughout.
3. Section headers, if used, should simply be phrases. Please restrict headers to three or four per essay. They may be italicized.
4. Miscellaneous
- indicate a new paragraph with a single tab
- set off any introductory phrase of five words or more with a comma, e.g. “Toward the end of World War II,...”
- dates should be of the form “15 December 1998”
- decades should be of the form “the 1980s”
- spell out centuries, e.g., “eighteenth century”
- use “and” in place of “&”, and “see” in place of “cf.”
- use minimal capitalization, e.g., “translation studies”, “the Roman Catholic church”;
- use minimal hyphenization, e.g., “postcolonial”
- possessives of names ending in “s” should take the form of “Yeats's”
- please avoid inappropriately gendered language, finding locutions as well that avoid awkward forms like “his/her” whenever possible
- represent dashes as two hyphens, no spaces, e.g., “despite the difficulty--however great.”
- if they are not part of the quote, punctuation marks (commas, full stops etc.) are placed outside/ after the quotation marks i.e. “[…] is shown”,
- object language & language examples are italicized
- linguistic meanings are marked by single quotation marks
- concepts are indicated by small capitals
- emphases in bold; those should only be used sparsely
- technical terms are italicized at first mention
- corpus names are italicized
- titles of books and journal titles are italicized (if referred in the main text)
- page ranges/ number ranges are marked by the n-dash
- omissions in quotes are marked as follows: […]
- in-text references should be formatted as follows:
(Name Year: Page number)
(Name & Name Year: Page number)
(Name, Name & Name Year: Page number) - please avoid using indirect quotes (“as cited in”). If it cannot be avoided, please also include the full references for the indirectly quoted publication in the list of references
- with co-authored papers: please indicate for each author how they have contributed to the paper
- in case the article contains quantitative / statistical data analysis, please indicate the name of a referee who can be consulted in order to confirm the accuracy of the results
Appendixes
Appendixes should follow the References section.
Author’s Submission Checklist
When submitting the revised version of your accepted paper, in addition to following the guidelines above, please be sure that you also include:
- a one-paragraph abstract of your article
- a list of approximately five keywords to aid in searching and indexing
- a short (2-3 sentence) professional profile, including key publications
- a mailing address (postal + e-mail)
Proofing procedure
The first author of a contribution will receive a PDF of first proofs of the article for correction via email and will be requested to return the corrections to the journal editor within 7 days of receipt. Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com which will enable you to read and print the file. Please limit corrections to the essential. It is at the publisher’s discretion not to implement substantial textual changes or to charge the author. If it is absolutely necessary to change larger chunks of text (i.e. more than just a few words), it is best to submit the changes on disk (with identical hard copy).
Please contact the journal editor if you cannot handle proofs for your article in electronic format (i.e., receive the proofs as a PDF-attachment at your email address).
Submission
Pragmatics & Cognition offers online submission. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the journal’s online submission and manuscript tracking site.
All
articles published in P&C are peer reviewed. Please make sure that the files you submit do not reveal your identity (as part of the text, the references or in the document properties).
Please consult the guidelines and the Short Guide to EM for Authors before you submit your paper.
If you are not able to submit online, or for any other editorial correspondence, please contact
the managing editor: piata.annagmail.com
Ethics
John Benjamins journals are committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices.
Authors and reviewers are kindly requested to read this Ethics Statement .
Please also note the guidance on the use of (generative) AI in the statement.
Rights and Permissions
Authors must ensure that they have permission to use any third-party material in their contribution; the permission should include perpetual (not time-limited) world-wide distribution in print and electronic format.
For information on authors' rights, please consult the rights information page.
Open Access
Articles accepted for this journal can be made Open Access through payment of an Article Publication Charge (APC) of EUR 1800 (excl. tax). To arrange this, please contact openaccessbenjamins.nl once your paper has been accepted for publication.
More information can be found on the publisher's Open Access Policy page.
Corresponding authors from institutions with which John Benjamins has a Read & Publish arrangement can publish Open Access without paying a fee. Please consult this list of institutions for up-to-date information on which articles qualify.
For information about permission to post a version of your article online or in an institutional repository ('green' open access or self-archiving), please consult the rights information page.
If the article is not (to be made) Open Access, there is no fee for the author to publish in this journal.
Archiving
John Benjamins Publishing Company has an agreement in place with Portico for the archiving of all its online journals and e-books.