Blind People’s Pragmatic Abilities

This book offers an analysis of blind people’s pragmatic abilities. By exploring the impact of visual impairment on the interpretation of utterances, it identifies common ground between the pragmatic analysis of comprehension and visual impairment, and shows how the study of pragmatics can be enriched by the study of visual impairment.

It also investigates the role of accessible contextual cues and the effect of visual impairment on comprehension. Although it is generally accepted that context plays a crucial role in comprehension, it is still unknown what effect a lack (or insufficiency) of certain contextual information has on interpretation and mutual communication between people. This raises the question of whether people who are blind are equally competent and successful in interpreting spoken language as sighted people. Also, bearing in mind the specific difficulties and delays faced by blind children in social and linguistic development indicated in previous studies, it is worth exploring whether these initial difficulties are eventually overcome by blind adults. This book, in offering a satisfactory answer to this relevant question, is one of the very few publications devoted to the analysis of the pragmalinguistic consequences of blindness.