Anthropological Linguistics and Ethnopragmatics

Ethnopragmatics (sometimes also: cultural pragmatics) is the ethnographically informed study of ‘cultural discourse logics’. Taking its starting point in the cultural discourse, ethnopragmatic research seeks to uncover the diverse set of ‘cultural scripts’ that guide speakers’ discourse. The aim is to articulate these often tacitly understood scripts for norms, ideals, knowledges, values, and cosmologies that speakers live by. Unlike in traditional approaches to pragmatics, where ‘universal maxims of conversation’, ‘universals of politeness’, and other universal claims have been promoted, ethnopragmatic approaches emphasize the pluriversal nature of human ways of speaking.