Contrastive Pragmatics

The early history and origins of contrastive pragmatics can be traced back to
the traditions of contrastive linguistics, though it barely touches on aspects of
language use. The term ‘contrastive pragmatics’ is originally used in an article by
Fillmore entitled Remarks on contrastive pragmatics (1984) and another one by
Oleksy Towards pragmatic contrastive analysis (1984). Other contributions are
also oriented to contrastive pragmatics even if the label was not directly alluded to
pragmatics, such as Enkvist’s Contrastive linguistics and text linguistics (1984),
Færch and Kasper’s A contrastive discourse analysis of gambits in German and
Danish (1984).

However, these contributions were not the earliest. In 1979, Riley wrote in
his article Towards a contrastive pragmalinguistics that “contrastive analysis
without a pragmalinguistic dimension is inadequate” (p. 57). Oleksy (1984, p. 362)
theorized that contrastive pragmatics is useful in “handling matters pertaining to
the understanding of how speakers across languages manipulate linguistic
expressions to perform different societal tasks”. In 1989, the field of contrastive
pragmatics witnessed a turning point when a group of scholars, namely Blum-
Kulka, House and Kasper published the results of a research project called Cross-
Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). In fact, their work which is
published under the title Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies
revolutionized the studies within the province of contrastive pragmatics. In this
work, the strategies of realizing apologies and requests are cross-culturally
investigated along with sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic perspectives.

In line with these historical developments, contrastive pragmatics the field of

study which “investigates the pragmatic principles people abide by in one language

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or language community in contrast to how these principles may govern linguistic
interaction in another language” (Pütz & Aertselaer, 2008, p. x). Blum-Kulka et al.,
(1989, p. 6) claim that contrastive pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics are
usually used as synonyms. Both of them encompass language-based approaches to
investigate the relationship between language use and the conventionalized cultural
patterns. However, Kádár and House (2021, p. 3) demonstrate that “cross-cultural
pragmatics … is somewhat broader than contrastive pragmatics”. In this sense,
contrastive pragmatics covers the “basic methodological approach by means of
which the cross-cultural pragmatician conducts data-based comparative linguistic
analysis”. Thus, contrastive pragmatics defined as the comparative study of the use
of language by humans in different languages and cultures.

The above definitions of contrastive pragmatics reveal that it is highly

related to sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics. On the one hand, it is associated
with sociopragmatics because it examines the sociological and cultural end of
using language. Therefore, Aijmer (2020, p. 28) claims that “contrastive pragmatic
studies need to take into account aspects of the communication situation and the
social and cultural context”. On the other hand, it is linked to pragmalinguistics
because it investigates the linguistic resources a particular language offers to its
speakers to convey meaning.

References
Pütz, M., & Aertselaer, J., N. (2008). Developing Contrastive Pragmatics:
Interlanguage and Cross-cultural Perspectives. Berlin and New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
ENKVIST, N. E. (n.d.). Contrastive linguistics and text linguistics. Contrastive
Linguistics. doi:10.1515/9783110824025.45  

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FILLMORE, C. J. (n.d.). Remarks on contrastive pragmatics. Contrastive
Linguistics. doi:10.1515/9783110824025.119 
Aijmer, K. (2020). Contrastive Pragmatics and Corpora. Contrastive Pragmatics,
1(1), 28–57. https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-12340004