Acknowledgement & Author’s Note

This work emerged from a need that emerged in my classroom and which has been the talk of almost every department meeting and corridor chat with colleagues I’ve been involved in for the past several years – a significant gap in pragmatic awareness of students regarding their email writing which actively harms their ability to effectively advocate for themselves and be prepared for the workforce.

Pragmatics is a fascinating field of study, but there are few accessible guides to it meant for students, and those that do exist are not Open Educational Resources (OER) and tend to be out of reach for students on a budget. Furthermore, expensive, technical books don’t tend to work well for instructors looking to add a small pragmatics module into existing courses. One of the great things about OER is their incredible adaptability, which I encourage you- yes you- to take advantage of by picking what you like and using it in the way that’s most effective to your classroom or your students. I would also suggest that this book might be useful as a limited guide for students, but not as something I’d build an entire course around or use as a definitive reference.

Remember, we are all pragmatics experts without knowing any technical terms or theory. Reading about pragmatics can be helpful, but I think the better course of action is to get out into the world and do pragmatics. My experience has been that students learn best by doing and noticing– that’s far more effective than

This book was written in the context of an American instructor working at an American HEI, so culturally, much of the pragmatic guidance in chapters 3 & 5 may strongly reflect that bias and should be viewed critically outside that same context. It’s with some trepidation that I must also make it clear that my own background is that of an engaged pragmatics theory spectator, and certainly not as anything close to an expert. I hold no degree in either computer science or pragmatics, and freely admit that this book was written as I sought to teach myself (often under the time crunch we all experience in modern life). Doubtlessly, there are mistakes- horrible, embarrassing mistakes- I ask you to read critically and to not take what I’ve written here as anything close to gospel. Frankly, the best part of OER resources is that they are easily adaptable and changeable- I’d love to make a follow-on edition to expand and improve this text but encourage you- yes, you again- to take this and build something better for your students.

I’d like to express a special thanks to the staff of the O’Toole Library at Saint Peter’s, who spent a tremendous amount of time chasing interlibrary loan resources that helped to inform this book. Thank you as well to the team which secured and oversees the grant to allow us to build these wonderful OER resources.

I dedicate this work (only the good parts, though!) to my loves, my life- my beautiful wife Jackie and perfect daughter Francesca.

June 2026

Andrew Sansone