Course aims:

Use the structure of pragmatic research to discover personal conclusions about language and communication.
Compare cultural communication methods and identify where misunderstandings are likely to take place.
Analyze any conversation as a piece of linguistic data

Course Entry Requirements:

At least B2 English level: upper independent English level. A B2 user can communicate easily and spontaneously in a clear and detailed manner.

Course contents:

C1. Introduction: Semantics and Pragmatics 1.1. Language as a tool of human interaction 1.2. Different cultures and different modes of interaction 1.3. Pragmatics – the study of human interaction

C2. Context, implicature and reference 2.1. The dynamic context 2.2. Context and convention 2.3. Implications and implicatures

C3. Different cultures, different languages, different Speech Acts 3.1. Preliminary examples and discussion 3.2. Interpretative hypothesis

C4. Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values 4.1. Self-assertion 4.2. Directness 4.3. Different attitudes to emotions

C5. Describing conversational routines 5.1. Conversational analysis: linguistic or non-linguistic pragmatics? 5.2. Compliment response routines 5.3. Compliment responses in different cultures

C6.  Speech Acts and speech genres across languages and cultures 6.1. Frameworks for analyzing a culture’s “forms of talk” 6.2. The problem of other minds

C7. The semantics of illocutionary forces 7.1. Interjections across cultures 7.2. Particles and illocutionary meanings 7.3. Quantitative illocutionary acts.

Teaching methods:

This is largely a discussion course. There will be significant hands-on activities that will require everyone to work together. Q & ADiscourse analysis

Learning outcomes:

This course provides an introduction to pragmatics, an important sub-field of linguistics. Pragmatics is the study of contextualized meaning in language. In pragmatics, we examine the relationship between the meaning of an utterance and the context in which the utterance is produced. In this course, we will explore a wide range of topics in the discipline, such as presupposition, implicature, speech acts, deixis and reference. Students will read original and recent work in these areas, and engage themselves in analyzing different types of utterances and their meanings as they are shaped by different pragmatic factors.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

analyses of utterances - weekly assignments (20%), written examination (75%), class participation (5%)

Recommended reading:

Cameron, D, Working with Spoken Discourse, Sage Publications, Sage, 2001, -.
Carston, Robyn, Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, -.
Clark, Herbert H, "Using Language"., Cambridge University Press, -, 1996, -.