recent publications on pragmatics we would like to bring to your attention recent publications from john benjamins publishing in the field of pragmatics : relevance theory . applications and implications . edited by robyn carston , nam sun song and seiji uchida university college london / nara women 's university 1998 x , 299 pp . pragmatics & beyond new series , 37 us / canada : cloth : 1 55619 330 0 price : us $ 70 . 00 rest of the world : cloth : 90 272 5049 9 price : nlg 140 john benjamins publishing web site : http : / / www . benjamins . com for further information via e-mail : service @ benjamins . com this collection of papers arises from a meeting of relevance theorists held in osaka , may 29-30 , 1993 . speakers at the conference included both of the originators of the theory , dan sperber and deirdre wilson , the editors of this volume and several other japanese linguists and pragmatists , all of whose work is included . the full breadth and richness of relevance theory is represented here , both in its applications to problems of utterance interpretation , that fall squarely within the domain of pragmatics , and its implications for linguistic semantics . several papers investigate and assess the theory 's account of figurative uses of language , such as irony , metaphor and metonymy . other central pragmatic issues include a relevance-driven account of generalized implicature , the role of bridging implicatures in reference assignment , the way in which different intonation patterns contribute to the relevance of an utterance and the application of the theory to literary texts . the recently developed semantic distinction between conceptually and procedurally encoded meaning , motivated by relevance-theoretic considerations , is employed in new accounts of several japanese particles and in a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of metalinguistic negation . the volume comes with a comprehensive glossary of relevance-theoretic terms . contributions by : dan wilson & deirdre sperber ; keiko tanaka ; reiko itani ; kunihiko imai ; nam sun song ; akiko yoshimura ; tomoko matsui ; seiji uchida ; robyn carston ; ken - ichi seto ; hideki hamamoto ; masa - aki yamanashi ; dan sperber & deirdre wilson . political discourse in transition in europe ( 1989-1991 ) edited by : paul a . chilton , mikhail v . ilyin and jacob l . mey university of warwick / moscow institute of international relations / odense university 1998 x , 272 pp . pragmatics & beyond new series , 36 us / canada : cloth : 1 55619 329 7 price : us $ 69 . 00 rest of the world : cloth : 90 272 5048 0 price : nlg 138 john benjamins publishing web site : http : / / www . benjamins . com for further information via e-mail : service @ benjamins . com the year 1989 brought political upheavals in central , eastern and southern europe , the effects of which have not yet ended . the political discourse of the cold war period disintegrated and gave way to competing alternatives . the contributors to this book are linguists , discourse analysts and social scientists , from all corners of the continent , whose tools of analysis shed light on the crucial two years of transition during which political concepts and political interaction changed in dramatic and sometimes violent ways . contributions by : mikhail v . ilyin ; paul chilton ; jacob mey ; victor sergeyev and nikolai biryukov ; georgii pocheptsov ; alexandre bourmeyster ; ludmila minaeva ; marina kaul ; elena borisova ; anatolii baranov ; christina schiffner and peter porsch ; kay richardson ; pierre achard ; ida kurcz ; christina teichmann ; jasna levinger . discourse of silence dennis kurzon university of haifa 1998 vi , 162 pp . pragmatics & beyond new series , 49 us / canada : cloth : 1 55619 811 6 price : us $ 48 . 00 rest of the world : cloth : 90 272 5062 6 price : nlg 96 john benjamins publishing web site : http : / / www . benjamins . com for further information via e-mail : service @ benjamins . com this book deals initially with the interpretation of the silent answer to a question . from a semiotic approach to the contrast between silence and speech mainly within a greimasian framework - an approach which shows insights into the general relationship between silence and speech , the discussion then turns to the application of pragmatic tools such as conversational analysis and adjacency pairs to the interpretation of silence . a model is presented which attempts to explain the observer 's cognitive competence , and its limits , in being able to interpret the silent answer . a basic distinction is also made between intentional silence ( the refusal to answer ) and non-intentional silence ( the psychological inability to answer ) . the interpretation of silence is then extended from a theoretical viewpoint to an analysis of various discourse types . firstly , silence in the legal world is discussed mainly in terms of the accused 's and the witness 's right of silence , especially their intentionally silent answers to lawyers ' questions . this develops into the " transitivization " of silence - the right of courts to silence lawyers ' references to the silence of witnesses , and the right of legal authorities to silence the broadcasting of direct speech . the study gradually moves away from the direct application of the model to the silent answer , and addresses the silencing of characters in a literary text ( jane austen 's pride and prejudice ) , in a biblical text ( moses and speech impediment in exodus ) , in opera ( moses ' silence in schoenberg 's opera , moses und aron ) , and in the final chapter , in the cinema . here , after the initial discussion of ingmar bergman 's the silence , focus is shifted to the generation gap and the representation of silence by song in mike nichols ' the graduate . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - bernadette martinez - keck tel : ( 215 ) 836-1200 publicity / marketing fax : ( 215 ) 836-1204 john benjamins north america e-mail : bernie @ benjamins . com po box 27519 philadelphia pa 19118-0519 check out the john benjamins web site : http : / / www . benjamins . com