Pragmatics in Neurogenic Communication Disorders (1998).  By Michel Paradis. Elsevier Science Inc., 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010-5107. 270 pages, $117.50. Reviewed by Brooke Hallowell, Athens, OH.

This book is a collection of articles from Volume 11 of the Journal of Neurolinguistics. The specific tools provided for the assessment and description of pragmatic performance may be especially helpful to clinicians and researchers. The special focus of the material may preclude its use in a general course on neurogenic language disorders. The authors represent a diverse array of clinicians and researchers from around the world, who developed their papers following an agreement among Aphasia Committee members at the 1995 Congress of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. The stated purpose of the book is to "focus the attention of language pathologists and neurolinguistics around the world on the importance of pragmatics in verbal communication and its disorders." Following Paradis" introductory chapter on the theory and history of the study of pragmatics, five chapters address discourse impairments, two focus on left and right brain damage, and three address dementia. The final five chapters are devoted to "other" impairments, addressing diverse pragmatic issues in right hemisphere stroke, aphasia, closed head injury, dementia, primary progressive aphasia, and signing in patents with Parkinson's disease.

Historical perspectives and reviews of pertinent literature are presented along with empirical data. The book has not been edited for consistency in quality of research design or for a logical progression of concepts from one study to the next. In Paradis compelling introduction to the study of pragmatic competence, he proposes the use of a new term, dyshyponoia, to capture the notion of an impairment "in the ability to infer what is meant from the context in which something is said." The term is not revisited in subsequent chapters. Still, certain recurrent themes emerge throughout the book. The importance of assessing pragmatic competence in patent evaluation, and of incorporating pragmatics into treatment goals, is visited repeatedly. Rather than focusing on the impaired language system, the reader is encouraged to emphasize the social communicative environment in both evaluation and treatment. The grouping of research populations into such categories as patients with Alzheimer's disease, right hemisphere syndrome, or aphasia, repeatedly leads to the highlighting of commonalties within a given population along with the recognition of exceptions to those commonalties.

In sum, the book highlights an important area of research and clinical practice. Problems in pragmatic competence, as Paradis says, represent "a social handicap at least as significant as aphasia."