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It is increasingly important in our globalised world for people to successfully manage interpersonal relationships. This is the first book to tackle this vital topic, by taking an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the process of relating across cultures. Drawing together key concepts from politeness theory, intercultural communication, and cross-cultural/intercultural psychology, it provides a robust framework for analysing and understanding intercultural encounters. It explores the ways in which individuals make judgements about others, deal with offence and conflict, maintain smooth relations, and build new relationships. These processes are explained conceptually and illustrated extensively with authentic intercultural examples and empirical data. With accessible explanations and follow-up activities, it will appeal not only to academics working in the areas of intercultural communication, pragmatic theory, conflict research and other related academic disciplines, but also to students of these topics, as well as professionals such as intercultural trainers and those working in the third sector.

This chapter argues that the issue of ‘truth’ has played a foundational role, not only within the discipline of philosophy, but also within many different aspects of our culture. However, there seems to be little agreement on what it really is, and while some philosophers contend that truth is a meaningless concept – a linguistic mirage – most would argue there's something of importance there, but what is it? Even if we struggle to determine the real nature of truth – as we did with the real nature of right and wrong in Chapter 11 – at least we structure our culture, our knowledges, and our school curricula around stuff we know to be unequivocally true … or do we? Arguably, many of the assumptions we make, often derived from five centuries of European colonialism, do not stand up to close scrutiny. They are often ‘truths’ that suit particular interests of the powerful, and subtly act to reinforce their world view. Myth #1 ‘Truth’ is the most straightforward thing there is Truth is simple. Certain things about the world are ‘facts’. If we report them accurately, we are telling the truth; if we don't, we aren't. That's all there is to it. Actually, no it isn't. Philosophers have been debating the notion of truth for over 2500 years, debates that have resulted in very different approaches to this issue, most frequently divided into realist and anti-realist models. These models in turn generate different kinds of truth tests, which can be applied to given problems and statements. All in all, ascertaining what is true, and what is not – in the curriculum, or elsewhere – remains a complex and contested process.

We have dealt with four pragmatic theories: speech act theory, conversational analysis developed from it, Gricean pragmatics and his co-operative principle, and Leech's politeness theory. The last two of these, and even more Sperber and Wilson, who developed the pragmatic theory known as Relevance Theory (RT) discussed in this chapter, emphasise that encoding and decoding are seldom sufficient for linguistic communication. Sperber and Wilson argue that the linguistic code may not even be necessary. For example, imagine I am in Laos in 1974 when the Royal Lao troops and the anti-American Pathet Lao communists are in a power-sharing government. Walking through the countryside, I am detained by communist troops who think I'm American. I studied Russian a long time ago, but can only remember one sentence: “Когда темнеет, мы закрываем шторы” meaning ‘when it gets dark we draw the curtains’. I utter this sentence, which convinces the communists I am Russian, and they release me. Although I use language to communicate I am Russian, I only employed an utterance act, not a coded propositional act. If I had, I might have died long ago in a communist mental hospital. Nevertheless, I communicated what I intended (cf. Searle 1969: 44–5).

© Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber 2012. Introduction Several strands of research on metarepresentation have a bearing on the study of linguistic communication. On the whole, there has been little interaction among them, and the possibility of integrating them with an empirically plausible pragmatic theory has not been much explored. This chapter has two main aims: to illustrate the depth and variety of metarepresentational abilities deployed in linguistic communication, and to argue that a pragmatic account of these abilities can both benefit from and provide useful evidence for the study of more general metarepresentational abilities. A metarepresentation is a representation of a representation: a higher-order representation with a lower-order representation embedded within it. The different strands of research on metarepresentation that have a bearing on the study of linguistic communication vary in the type of metarepresentations involved and the use to which they are put. First, there is the philosophical and psychological literature on mindreading (or ‘theory of mind’), which deals with the ability to form thoughts about attributed thoughts (Whiten 1991; Davies and Stone 1995a, 1995b; Carruthers and Smith 1996). Suppose a child sees a ball being put into a box. Having formed the thought in (1), he might go on, by observing his companions, to form thoughts of the type in (2): The ball is in the box. There is a now a substantial body of work on how this metapsychological ability develops and how it can break down. It may be present to varying degrees. People may differ, for example, in their ability to attribute to others beliefs incompatible with their own. A child who believes (1) and lacks this ability would be limited to the metarepresentations in (2a) and (2c). A child with first-order ‘theory of mind’ could attribute to others beliefs that differ from his own (as in (2b)); and one with second-order ‘theory of mind’ could attribute to others beliefs about the beliefs of others which differ from his own (as in (2d)) (Leslie 1987; Astington, Harris and Olson 1988; Frye and Moore 1991; Fodor 1992; Gopnik and Wellman 1992; Lewis and Mitchell 1994; Smith and Tsimpli 1995; Scholl and Leslie 1999). People with autism are typically said to be lacking in first- or second-order metapsychological abilities of this type (Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith 1985; Leslie 1991; Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg and Cohen 1993; Happe 1993, 1994; Baron-Cohen 1995).

Book description: Pragmatics is the study of human communication: the choices speakers make to express their intended meaning and the kinds of inferences that hearers draw from an utterance in the context of its use. This Handbook surveys pragmatics from different perspectives, presenting the main theories in pragmatic research, incorporating seminal research as well as cutting-edge solutions. It addresses questions of rational and empirical research methods, what counts as an adequate and successful pragmatic theory, and how to go about answering problems raised in pragmatic theory. In the fast-developing field of pragmatics, this Handbook fills the gap in the market for a one-stop resource to the wide scope of today's research and the intricacy of the many theoretical debates. It is an authoritative guide for graduate students and researchers with its focus on the areas and theories that will mark progress in pragmatic research in the future.

But truth is not ‘that which works’ but something in Nature that is worked with. Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge, An Essay on Nature In Aristotle, truth, like being, is said in many ways. A person is said to be “able to be true in life as well as in speech”; an inquiry is said to be oriented toward the “truth and nature of things”; and the mark of good action is said to be the truth that “stands in agreement with right desire.” Truth is also, of course, articulated in the things said themselves: it belongs to those declarative sayings that attempt to give voice to the truth by saying something of something, by combining and separating, affirming and denying; and truth is said not to be missed by those who “say something concerning nature,” for it is “as though they were compelled by the truth itself.” Truth is compelling and pervasive. The power of perceiving, when directed at what is proper to it, “is always true”; and while being appeared to and thinking things through can be true or false, for a certain thinking, “the true is to touch and to express” and there is no falsity, “but only ignorance and not touching.” The pervasive plurivocity of truth in Aristotle testifies to the manner in which the nature of truth grows in and through encounters with the nature of things. Aristotle articulates the nature of truth by attending to the truth of nature.

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is concerned with a variety of questions about knowledge and related topics. Certainly one of the most important questions is “What is the extent of our knowledge?” Some philosophers, especially those in the “common sense” tradition, would say that we know pretty much those things that we ordinarily think we know. They would tell us, for example, that we know that there are other people, that they think and feel, that we were alive yesterday, that there are cars and dogs, and so on. They would tell us that we know a lot about our immediate physical surroundings, other people, and the past. Others would add that we know various ethical and moral truths and some would also say that they know various truths about God and God's attitude toward mankind. Still other philosophers, influenced by various forms of skepticism, would say that we know much less than any of this, and the most extreme skeptics would say that we really know nothing at all. Evaluating these views is no easy matter, and when we reflect on them, and the reasons advanced in favor of them, we are soon led to other questions about knowledge. Such reflection might naturally lead us to ask one of the most important and oldest epistemological questions, “What is knowledge?” Over two millennia ago, Plato wrestled with it in his dialogue, Theaetetus . Plato sought a definition of knowledge, but came to no clear answer and the dialogue ended inconclusively.

The pragmatic conception of truth, anticipated by Henry David Thoreau and developed by C.S. Peirce and subsequent pragmatists, is proposed as a useful analogy for characterising 'sustainability'. Peirce's definition of 'truth' provides an attractive approach to sustainability because (a) it re-focuses discussions of truth and objectivity from a search for 'correspondence' to an 'external world' (the 'conform' approach) to a more forward-looking ('transform') approach; and (b) it emphasises the crucial role of an evolving, questioning community in the conduct of inquiry. Any successful definition of sustainability must share these characteristics with Peircean truth. While Peirce and John Dewey never reconciled their disagreements regarding the nature and task of 'inquiry', a pragmatist resolution of their differences is offered, arguing that we need both a logic of management sciences ( logica utens ) and a logic of pure science ( logica docens ), which (perhaps among other differences) respond very differently to uncertainty. It is shown that adaptive management - an important approach to environmental management - can be understood as a first approximation of a logica utens for social learning in pursuit of solutions to environmental problems, and it is suggested that a pragmatist, transform approach to inquiry such as Dewey's may provide a way around the 'fact-value' gulf.

No sooner has Aristotle summarized his theory of meaning in the De Interpretatione than he turns to the topic of sentences. Sentences are the basic linguistic item to which truth values can be assigned, and they are made up of linguistic units that have meaning. To avoid the problems of the Cratylus , Aristotle draws a sharp distinction between the basic units of meaning and the basic truth-functional entities. He also acknowledges that language has functions other than assertion. That said, sentences have truth values in virtue of what is expressed by the sentence, and this is a function of the meaning of the parts of a sentence. A sentential part has a meaning just in case it is a conventional sign for a thought, the content of which is determined by its relation to an object that is external to the thought. Combining terms to make an assertion yields a statement that expresses a nexus of external features. Whether the assertion is true or not depends upon whether this nexus obtains in fact. Certain peculiarities of Aristotle's discussion of truth – more accurately described as a discussion of falsity – fall into place when one recognizes that Aristotle's starting point is a conception of truth-functional entities that are compounds. These compounds are constructed from meaningful (but not independently truth-functional) linguistic units. Similarly, certain peculiarities of his conception of necessity fall into place when it is recognized that for Aristotle the force of the necessity predicate is to indicate that the nexus of features always obtains.

Truth as a theological problem Recall for a moment Jesus' confrontation with Pontius Pilate. As the Gospel of John depicts the scene – in striking contrast to the version shared by Matthew, Mark, and Luke – Jesus engages in an argument with Pilate on kingship and truth. The debate takes a form well known to philosophers ancient and modern; it is an exercise in conceptual clarification. Pilate begins by asking Jesus if he is “the King of the Jews” (18:33). Jesus responds by ascribing to himself a sort of kingship which, while not fully defined by him, is “not from this world” (18:36). Whatever else it involves, this sort of kingship entails that its possessor will not fight to preserve his own life (18:36). Pilate finds this puzzling: “So are you a king?” he asks Jesus (18:37). He appears not to be sure that a plausible concept of kingship can embrace such notions as unworldliness and non-violence. Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Talk of a sort of kingship which involves not only non-violence but a public commitment to truth only adds to Pilate's confusion. “What is truth?” he asks (18:38). There the debate ends. Some interpreters of this exchange between Jesus and Pilate (Friedrich Nietzsche, for one) have seen Pilate as the clear winner of the debate, the hero of the story.