ABSTRACT
Pragmatics may be likened to a vast terrain whose boundaries are so distant that we perceive them only dimly, given our less-than-exalted vantage point. This is somewhat embarrassing for a discipline so intently focused upon the study of vantage points; although there is perhaps a certain measure of poetic justice involved in the embarrassment. As a serious empirical discipline, pragmatics is still in its infancy, clumsily attempting to grasp for its own meaning. It would thus be presumptive, and perhaps even alien to the very spirit of pragmatics, to saddle it prematurely with a rigid definition. Still, if there is a unifying theme to the entire enterprise, it must have at its very core the notion of context, or frame, or point of view.
