Assessing communicative intents: a situated pragmatics approach

The analysis of communicative intents is described as it has developed over time, beginning with J.L. Austin's work published in 1975. Recommendations for best practice are offered in which a situated approach is advocated. Key elements of this approach are a focus on contextual variables and open-ended, rather than list-oriented, assessments of range of intents. It is argued that intents must be assessed relative to the environment, with documentation of environmental variables such as barriers to communicative opportunity. Further, caution is urged in using lists of intents as the sole guide to analysis, because such lists serve to limit awareness of individual differences and multifunctionality of utterances.