ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that pragmatics has a vital contribution to make to the clinical characterisation, assessment and treatment of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Pragmatic concepts and theories can shed light on a group of impairments which pose a significant barrier to effective communication and which impact negatively social functioning and other domains. The chapter examines the several pragmatic impairments. The characterisation of these impairments demands the use of concepts such as implicature, presupposition and speech acts, and provides an impetus for early adopters of clinical pragmatics to develop a new focus in language pathology. Having a set of pragmatic concepts at the disposal for the first time, clinicians and researchers began to identify an ever greater range of children and adults whose communicative impairments appeared to be caused by breakdown in the pragmatics of language. The chapter examines some of the clinical populations in developmental and acquired pragmatic disorders, along with illustrative examples of their pragmatic impairments.
