Essentials in the development of religion Book

This book was probably absolutely amazing when it came out - 37 years ago. It focuses on the tedious issues of the (then) field and, because of that, makes itself irrelevant 2 score later. It's great for covering some interesting information but you can get better, and quicker, elsewhere. The 53 page introductory chapter is dedicated to the definition and scope of pragmatics, which he never lands on, and painfully invalidates every possible definition before landing on "maybe everything outside of semantics - but this means we need to properly define semantics and that's difficult so maybe semantics is truth conditionals?"

I found myself dreading picking it up. It is written only for someone with at least a bachelors in linguistics from a good school that would hit semantics hard. I can't imagine ever recommending this book to someone when deixis, presupposition, implicature, and conversation analysis is covered elsewhere better - for the latter two, I'd suggest Thomas Holtgraves's "Language as Social Action."

That being said, Levinson is an absolute behemoth. He's a pioneer in politeness theory, has pushed the knowledge of pragmatics, and has for deeeecades. He wrote this book around the time he was my age and I absolutely hate him for it. He's a filthy, filthy genius.

But this book is still terrible in 2020.