ABSTRACT
Leonard found overwhelming evidence in the literature that remedial professionals, hereafter referred to as clinicians, and were encountering difficulties in persuading their clients to use in other settings those skills which they appeared to have learned in the classroom or clinic. Pragmatics is a term used to cover the whole area of language use and communication in action, 'semantics' and 'discourse' studies examine levels of language. This is a term which poses problems because of the variety of ways in which it can be used in speech pathology. Prosodic features and natural gesture form such an important area of pragmatics that it is surprising how infrequently clinical records and research reports make reference to them. Deictic terms make story-telling possible, enable us to make arrangments, facilitate the giving and receiving of instructions, directions and advice and enable us to establish a joint focus of attention with communicative partners.
