Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning

“More than an assemblage of essays, Deborah Poole’s magisterial volume synthesizes the commitments, conundrums, and complicities that make up the long disciplinary history of Latin American anthropology. Revealing an imposing historical depth and analytical crispness, Poole’s A Companion to Latin American Anthropology brings together an impressive array of scholars of and from Latin America to illuminate the critical relationship between politics and scholarship, in a region that has been central to anthropology’s methodological and moral development.” Greg Grandin, New York University

"Move over, Austen--and Austin. Prodigiously comprehensive and engagingly presented, Beaver and Clark's rich and subtle study of focus is essential reading on intonational meaning, scalar particles, implicature, presupposition, polarity licensing, and alternative semantics. This is sensitivity training of the highest order."
–Laurence Horn, Yale University

"Sense and Sensitivity merits a close reading by anyone interested in contemporary pragmatic theory. It is clearly written and accessible, and offers a carefully reasoned case for lexical sensitivity to focus. Beaver and Clark's thesis is sure to serve as a touchstone for further work on the subject."
–Craige Roberts, Ohio State University