This book offers a practical perspective on second language development in an academic context. The first part lays the foundations of a metapragmatic approach to the interpretation of utterances at the discourse level in L2.

In the second and third parts, the reformulated constructs of pragmatic awareness and metapragmatic awareness are applied in the comparative analysis of a series of academic and newspaper/magazine genres - for example, research article - editorial comment, research article title - newspaper title, abstract - journalistic report - and in the evaluation of student response samples indicating levels of pragmatic competence and linguistic development.

The glossary of linguistic terms introduces the tools of metapragmatic and metalinguistic analysis based on the Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson and Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday respectively. The book includes numerous self-study exercises and commentary.

[Excerpt from the publisher's text]