Book excerpt: Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics, Second Edition (COPE) is an authoritative single-volume reference resource comprehensively describing the discipline of pragmatics, an important branch of natural language study dealing with the study of language in it's entire user-related theoretical and practical complexity. As a derivative volume from Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, it comprises contributions from the foremost scholars of semantics in their various specializations and draws on 20+ years of development in the parent work in a compact and affordable format. Principally intended for tertiary level inquiry and research, this will be invaluable as a reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics inquiring into the study of meaning and meaning relations within languages. As pragmatics is a centrally important and inherently cross-cutting area within linguistics, it will therefore be relevant not just for meaning specialists, but for most linguistic audiences. - Edited by Jacob Mey, a leading pragmatics specialist, and authored by experts - The latest trends in the field authoritatively reviewed and interpreted in context of related disciplines - Drawn from the richest, most authoritative, comprehensive and internationally acclaimed reference resource in the linguistics area - Compact and affordable single volume reference format