István Kecskés, The socio-cognitive approach to communication and pragmatics, 2023. Cham: Springer, pp. xvi + 331. €114.39. ISBN 9783031301599.

The book reviewed here came about as a result of merging two important sources: Kecskés' two series of lectures given at the University of Messina, Italy, in 2019 and 2021, and several of his studies published in various international journals and book chapters between 2008 and 2023.The readership targeted include researchers of theoretical as well as intercultural (IC) pragmatics, psycholinguistics with a mainly cognitive orientation, and current fields of linguistic philosophy.It also aims to provide current views in these fields for scholars as well as students of applied linguistics.The contents of the volume are divided into four parts, containing 16 chapters.In the first part covering Chapters 1-4, Kecskés, founding father of the theoretical framework of investigations in IC pragmatics, surveys and critically reviews current models analyzing aspects of language usage, including the description of production as well as reception (interpretation).He points to the inadequacy of classic and current approaches which lay emphasis on investigating dominantly the productive aspects of linguistic representation and almost fully neglect interpretation of the role of the nature of comprehension.The basic tenets of his socio-cognitive theory outlined in this part of the book highlight the need for a reflexive mode of investigating the complexity of linguistic representation and usage.The model presented provides an integration of cooperation and salience-based egocentrism.Additionally, societal, that is, collective, as well as individual facets of understanding the mechanisms of meaning creation and comprehension are also discussed.Such an integration refers to the joint operation of three vitally important factors: operation of collective prior knowledge, the role of conventionalized individual prior knowledge, and aspects of actual situationally co-created knowledge, wherein the author stresses the importance of investigating dialogically manifested modes of communications in pragmatic analyses of language usage.Investigating communication in terms of IC pragmatics constitutes a framework complementary to analyses based on Grice's classical views.The socio-cognitive analysis outlined in the first theoretical chapter constitutes the essential basis of Kecskés' model.In reference to Wittgenstein's ideas on the relation of the representation of language to its aspects of usage, Kecskés stresses the importance of