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Language and Music: The Pragmatic Turn

Abstract This paper argues that there has been a 'pragmatic turn' in recent thinking about the relation between language and music, from the perspectives of both linguistic theory and musicological research. In the case of linguistics, there has been a move away from semantic or semiological approaches towards a contextual analysis of meaning, informed by recent pragmatic theory. In the case of musicological research, there has been a move towards the empirical investigation of performance. After a critical review of these competing approaches, the paper compares and contrasts the notion of 'performance' in linguistics and musicology, and gives a brief historical survey to serve as an introduction to the various contributions in this issue of the journal.