Book Reviews

Abstract

Readers will certainly find in this recent volume a most timely work that stresses the importance that non-verbal phenomena and elements lying between the linguistic and non-linguistic, the coded and non-coded, have in communication. Thus, Wharton undoubtedly redresses the balance in their favour after decades in which they have been incomprehensively relegated to a second plane in linguistics and other neighbouring disciplines. By exploring what and how such phenomena and elements contribute to communication, he brings to the pragmatic arena a wide range of items that have often met controversial accounts or escaped systematic linguistic description but, particularly, missed pragmatic unitary explanations. The following sections summarise each of the chapters this volume comprises, after which follows a critical evaluation.The book opens with this introductory chapter-"Natural Pragmatics" (1-17), where Wharton starts by clearly explaining the reasons that encouraged him to write this most interesting work: controlled or unconscious vocal, facial and bodily gestures-which he refers to as "natural non-verbal behaviours"-are omnipresent in human communication and largely contribute to or bias our understanding of discourse. Although they have been approached from different frameworks, such as functionalism, conversational and discourse analysis, sociology or anthropology, they have not been approached from a cognitive perspective that unveils how they might interact with linguistic properties of utterances. Such an approach must answer the following questions: a) What is the relation between natural non-verbal behaviours and intentional communication? b) How are non-verbal behaviours interpreted? c) What do they convey? d) What is the relation between natural non-verbal behaviours and those nonverbal behaviours that are not natural? (3)(4)