This volume describes and evaluates the latest theories, empirical findings, and applications in the field of pragmalinguistics developed in some socialist states of Europe – mainly in Czechoslovakia, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, and the USSR. The results of the author’s own research in pragmatically oriented psycholinguistics are included as well. The main approaches through which the pragmalinguistic studies have been performed in Eastern Europe are those of functional stylistics, textlinguistics, rhetorics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, social communication theory, and semiotics. Much attention is devoted in the book to applied research, mainly in the spheres of education and instruction, mass communication and propaganda.