ABSTRACT
Many children who have communication delays or impairments show diffi culty in the domain of pragmatics-the understanding of how language is used in social contexts. When pragmatics as a linguistic discipline was fi rst applied to child language disorder, the focus was on identifi able speech acts of children (Meline & Brackin, 1987) and the formal pragmatic devices observed in developing expressive language. Since that time, greater understanding of the relationship between cognitive, social, and language development, as well as increased interdisciplinary practice and research, has resulted in a much broader view of
the scope of pragmatics. In addition, the nature of and overlap between developmental psychopathological conditions and language impairment have become clearer. A more contemporary approach to pragmatics in child language disorder focuses therefore on the notion of “social communication,” which encompasses both the formal aspects of pragmatics, social inferencing and verbal social interactions.
