Edited by Konstanze Jungbluth, Cornelia Müller, Nicole Richter, Hartmut Schröder

We are happy today to publish our new peer-reviewed international journal PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS. We hope the online and open-access publishing format on our platform, which contains several interactive tools to stimulate senior researchers and young scholars alike. We also hope that these publications on pragmatics will spur a lively, even fervent discussion between linguists from all over the world. Linguistic pluralism has always been an essential part of our discipline, and PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS offers the forum to showcase and practice this.

Reviews have always been, and continue to be, one of the means of spreading knowledge in our growing subdiscipline by overcoming linguistic borders. Pragmatics sans frontières could have been another choice for the name of our journal. Gaining an understanding for what is happening on the other side is critical. Curiosity is essential for research. PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS aims to create a platform where researchers can publish and discuss scientific approaches on language use published in any language; where evaluations are interchanged and possibly debated again. This kind of orientation is searched by young scholars and novices in general. Two things have emerged during the successful development of the comparatively young history of our research in Pragmatics: The rapid growth of publications on the one hand, and the historical moment of passing the baton to the next generation on the other. Accepting this challenge, we have developed an interactive and innovative online platform around the review journal PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS.

PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS strives to become one of the major "marketplaces" for research on Pragmatics, allowing researchers and students to browse through books, reviews, and the research profiles of fellow pragmaticians; to share evaluations and thoughts both across the platform and across other social media; and finally, to discuss books, reviews and other topics related to pragmatics in the forum. Publishing your review in PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS will ensure its high visibility within the Pragmatics community, rather than having it trail out of sight among myriad publications perhaps unrelated to your field of study. In PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS, your review will find the interested and informed audience necessary for fruitful scientific exchange.

While moving energetically forward, reflection has to be part of the endeavor. In our first volume, we include an article addressing review as a text genre. This article tells us a lot about culture-specific differences between evaluations – an essential part of every review – while at the same time describing the structure and typology of the text genre or discourse tradition Review. It was not written very recently, but is being published for the first time


today. The delay in publishing makes evident that Reviews may turn into (in-)visible stumbling stones, preparing careers and failures. Embedded in different sociocultural and scientific contexts, evaluations have different outcomes. The way to express evaluation, enthusiasm or critique on thoughts and results of contemporary researchers of different ages and variable backgrounds can vary a lot itself, and it changes over time. We are very much looking forward to receiving comments or even articles on this topic. We encourage you, senior researchers and young scholars alike, to keep practicing this text genre by writing reviews on monographs and edited volumes you find interesting. The larger the community, the larger the need for orientation arises. It is the responsibility of experienced researchers to provide this for novices. This platform offers a comment function, the possibility to evaluate reviews and books, as well as a forum to share your perspective with other users. Our wish for the future is that you, our users, will turn it into a platform for lively discussions, with the outcome of growing reciprocal understanding of different standpoints rooted in the respective scientific and sociocultural background.

PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS, embedded in the faculty of cultural and social sciences of the Europa Universität VIADRINA, is the shared cross-point of the four responsible editors and researchers in Pragmatics anchored at the German-Polish border. Chief-editor Konstanze Jungbluth is supported by her co-editors Cornelia Müller, Nicole Richter and Hartmut Schröder. We are incredibly happy to collaborate with the members of our advisory board connecting – so far – three continents: Guiomar Ciapuscio (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (Poznan: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza: English Faculty, Poland) and Heinz Leonhard Kretzenbacher (University of Melbourne, Australia). We warmly welcome colleagues interested in joining us in this exciting endeavor.

Contribute to PRAGMATICS.REVIEWS: please browse our books waiting for reviews and encourage colleagues to do so, too! We are very much looking forward to getting in touch with you to interchange experiences, thoughts and reciprocally enrich our perspectives!

Konstanze Jungbluth


Download: Konstanze Jungbluth: Pragmatics.Reviews2013.1.1 Editorial