The present volume is the second of two volumes of the 7th International Pragmatics Conference (Budapest, Hungary, July 9–14, 2000) proceedings, it is a collection of all selected articles not related to the special topic of the conference "Cognition in language use", but of papers of general interest for pragmatics. In this volume pragmatics is interpreted in its widest sense, it is an interdisciplinary perspective on language use and communication. This wide and tolerant perspective results in the range of topics covered in this volume and also in the range of approaches. The collection of the selected general interest articles provides a representative overview of the field pragmatics.