This user-friendly introduction to a new 'performative' methodology in linguistic pragmatics breaks away from the traditional approach which understands language as a machine. Drawing on a wide spectrum of research and theory from the past thirty years in particular, Douglas Robinson presents a combination of 'action-oriented approaches' from sources such as J.L. Austin, H. Paul Grice, Harold Garfinkel and Erving Goffman.
Paying particular attention to language as drama, the group regulation of language use, individual resistance to these regulatory pressures and nonverbal comm ER -