Pragmatic efficiency and text comprehension in L1 and L2 spoken and written communication

What are the underlying mechanisms that allow people to select and process contextual cues and successfully understand a written or oral text, or to learn a new word? And what hurdles are to be faced when the pragmatic abilities are inefficient, like in some non-neurotypical conditions? All the contributions in this special issue tackle the role of pragmatic processing and associated cognitive demands in linguistic tasks of different nature, ranging from vocabulary learning to morphological processing to reading and listening and comprehension tasks in first (L1) and foreign languages (FL). The empirical investigations carried out with typical and atypical learners of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese highlight how cognitively demanding text interpretation might be. A picture emerges from this collection of studies that shows the complex interaction of an efficient cognitive system and of individual linguistic abilities when implicit and explicit information must be understood and controlled for successful and appropriate communication. These articles advance our understanding of the impact of pragmatic abilities in comprehension processes at various levels of the L1 and FL system, and, at the same time, they offer suggestions and valuable food for thought for the development of effective and inclusive classroom practices that will help language teachers to meet their daily challenges.