Pragmatics has become an increasingly important topic in speech therapy. This book presents its material in a form accessible to practitioners and addresses the applied areas of most concern to speech therapists.

Rising recognition of semantic and pragmatic disabilities in children with specific language impairment has created a demand for a satisfactory framework and suitable methods for assessment and remediation. Work in tackling these problems is at an early stage. This book reports on progress in research and practice in a form accessible to professionals from a variety of backgrounds.

This reference work is the first to examine pragmatic language disorders of clients in complex and underserved populations. In chapters written by a range of experts, the unique pragmatic language skills of clients are examined, allowing for a broad overview. The text gives focus to client groups ​with complex cognitive and psychiatric problems and children and adults that have been underserved by clinical language services ​because of maltreatment and social exclusion. Pragmatic disorders are examined in ​children ​with sensory loss, children who have been exposed to HIV and substance abuse, and adults with Huntington's disease and other complex neurodegenerative pathologies. This Handbook is an essential reference for researchers and clinicians in speech-language pathology, linguistics, psychology, and education.

This is the first volume to present individual chapters on the full range of developmental and acquired pragmatic disorders in children and adults. In chapters that are accessible to students and researchers as well as clinicians, this volume introduces the reader to the different types of pragmatic disorders found in clinical populations as diverse as autism spectrum disorder, traumatic brain injury and right hemisphere language disorder. The volume also moves beyond these well-established populations to include conditions such as congenital visual impairment and non-Alzheimer dementias, in which there are also pragmatic impairments. Through the use of conversational and linguistic data, the reader can see how pragmatic disorders impact on the communication skills of the clients who have them. The assessment and treatment of pragmatic disorders are examined, and chapters also address recent developments in the neuroanatomical and cognitive bases of these disorders.

This volume provides a synthesis of work in the field of childhood pragmatic problems. It provides both an introduction and more detailed consideration of the area. Aspects covered include: conversational analysis, speech and communicative acts, reference, narrative, pragmatic comprehension, and relevance

Pragmatics - the way we communicate using more than just language - is particularly problematic for people with speech disorders. Through an extensive analysis of how pragmatics can go wrong, this 2007 book not only provides a clinically useful account of pragmatic impairment, but it also throws light on how pragmatics functions in healthy individuals. Michael Perkins brings mainstream and clinical pragmatics together by showing that not only can our understanding of pragmatics be aided by the study of pragmatic impairment, but that clinical and theoretical pragmatics are better served by treating pragmatic ability and disability within a single framework. It is a comprehensive book aimed primarily at linguists and psycholinguists rather than clinicians, and includes illustrative material on conditions such as autism and aphasia and a wide range of other communication disorders in both children and adults.

This wide-ranging survey of the state of the art in clinical pragmatics includes an examination of pragmatic disorders in previously neglected populations such as juvenile offenders, children and adults with emotional and behavioural disorders, and adults with non-Alzheimer dementias. This book makes a significant contribution to the discussion of pragmatic disorders by exploring topics which have a fast-rising profile in the field. These topics include disorders in which there are both pragmatic and cognitive components, and studies of the complex impacts of pragmatic disorders such as mental health problems, educational disadvantage and social exclusion. This book also presents a critical evaluation of our current state of knowledge of pragmatic disorders. The author focuses on the lack of integration between theoretical and clinical branches of pragmatics and argues that the work of clinicians is all too often inadequately informed by theoretical frameworks. She attempts to bridge these gaps by pursuing a closer alliance of clinical and theoretical branches of pragmatics. It is claimed that this alliance represents the most promising route for the future development of the field. At once a yardstick measuring progress thus far in clinical pragmatics, and also a roadmap for future research development, this single-author volume defines where we have reached in the field, as well as where we have to go next.​