Although there is still no general agreement on the exact functions of linguistic pragmatics and the fields of activity it covers, it can generally be understood as the relationship of language to its users and the resultant practical applications of language. Thus it is one of the main concerns of research in this field to achieve a better understanding and account of the influence of extra-linguistic factors on language.
In this introduction to the field, "pragmalinguistics" is seen as a field within the more general subject of "pragmatics". The book aims to familiarize those interested in linguistics with the problems and methods of what is still an "open" field of enquiry and to present its main topic areas - pragmalinguistics as a general semiotic theory, as speech act theory, as the linguistics of conversation, and as text linguistics.