Summing up, Pragmatics: A slim guide is a valuable tool for anyone interested in the study of pragmatics.
Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Ghent University, Linguist List
Just what a slim guide should be: brisk, authoritative, even-handed, accessible, entertaining. Birner deftly traverses the theoretical and empirical landscape of contemporary pragmatics from (non-)literality to speech acts, from presupposition to implicature, from reference to information structure, enlivened at each stop with illustrative data from Poe's tales to political innuendo.
Laurence R. Horn, Yale University
Combining elegant exposition and well-chosen examples, this book serves not only to introduce the study of pragmatics to a new audience, but also to shed new light on several widely-discussed topics.
Chris Cummins, University of Edinburgh