ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the journey taken by an utterance, from its origin as a communicative intention in the mind of a speaker to the recovery of this intention in the mind of the hearer. This journey can be best characterized in terms of a communication cycle. This chapter uses the concept of a communication cycle to understand how pragmatic disorders can arise at any point in communication. This includes pragmatic enrichments of the logical form of an utterance and the use of this enriched logical form to recover the implicature of an utterance but also motor and sensory processes that compromise the production and reception of the speech signal. This chapter takes a cognitive approach to pragmatic disorders by relating these disorders to cognitive skills such as theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions. These cognitive skills underpin communication; their breakdown disrupts pragmatic aspects of language and results in disorders called cognitive-communication disorders by speech-language pathologists. This chapter concludes by examining experimental studies that demonstrate a relationship between ToM and executive function performance, and pragmatic language skills in children and adults with clinical conditions.
