ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of pragmatics and its potential clinical applicability to communication after traumatic brain injury (TBI), contrasting this with an alternative framework based on cognition. Pragmatics is broadly concerned the way language is used, both in terms of the linguistic choices made by its users and the way such choices are affected by contextual and sociocultural considerations. The terminological variation existing within theoretical pragmatics is also evident in the work on pragmatics and TBI that has been carried out so far, making approaches difficult to compare. Speech Act Theory also provides some of the theoretical underpinning to both approaches to pragmatic skills in TBI. TBI commonly results in diffuse damage and multifocal lesions concentrated in the temporal and frontomedial lobes of the brain. The TBI patients studied, who had executive dysfunction and concomitant communication problems, were unable to produce effective hints that only alluded to the actual request by subtle innuendo.
