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Pragmatics is the study of language in context, a field that emerged from the traditions of philosophy of language and linguistics. As such, it is characterized by a theoretical approach based on intuition and the observation of linguistic behaviour. Recently, the cognitively oriented nature of theoretical accounts led to an ‘experimental turn’ and the rise of Experimental Pragmatics, where pragmatic phenomena are investigated via behavioural and neurolinguistic methods. These new research programmes have largely documented the mechanisms of pragmatic processing, thus offering evidence in favour of an internal, competence-based characterization of pragmatics. Nowadays, the main challenge of describing pragmatic competence revolves around explaining which cognitive functions are involved in the processing of the different pragmatic phenomena. Since in the Gricean framework, pragmatic interpretation involves the attributions of speakers’ intentions, pragmatic processing is typically considered in strict relation with the ability of attributing mental states to others. In this chapter, we argue that speakers’ pragmatic competence is not limited to the ability of understanding other people’s intentions, but has its own characterization in terms of developmental trajectories, patterns of decay, and neural substrates. Moreover, a cluster of cognitive functions supports pragmatic processing in ways that differ across types of pragmatic tasks. We illustrate our position with evidence from a range of classic pragmatic phenomena, including presupposition, turn-taking, metaphor, and irony.
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