Issues in Pragmatics 3301-JF281
The course is an overview of selected pragmatic issues. It focuses on classical and neo-Gricean theories of implicature, and two influential theories of politeness: G. Leech's theory of politeness and P. Brown and S. Levinson's model of politeness. It discusses the pragmatics-cognition interface, concentrating on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory, and the interface between pragmatics and semantics. It also deals with pragmatic accounts of metaphor, idioms, proverbs, irony and conversational humour. Topics to be discussed:
1. Introduction - pragmatics (definitions, history), linguistic underdeterminacy, basic notions in semantics and pragmatics (sentence, utterance, proposition, context, truth value, truth condition, entailment, presupposition);
2. Implicature - classical Gricean theory of conversational implicature (the Co-operative Principle, conversational maxims, observing / flouting / violating / opting out of the maxims, types of implicature, tests for implicature);
3. Implicature - two neo-Gricean pragmatic theories of conversational implicature (the Hornian system, the Levinsonian system);
4. Pragmatics and cognition: Relevance Theory (relevance: the Cognitive / Communicative Principle of Relevance, explicature / implicature, conceptual / procedural meaning, pragmatics as Fodorian 'central process' / pragmatics as submodule of 'theory of mind');
5. Pragmatics and semantics: the semantics/pragmatics distinction truth-conditional / non-truth-conditional meaning, conventional / non-conventional meaning, context independence / context dependence), pragmatic intrusion into what is said (what is said, explicature, the pragmatically enriched said, conversational impliciture, Levinson's conversational implicature);
6. Models of politeness (Leech - The Politeness Principle and its attendant maxims, Brown and Levinson - positive / negative face, face-threatening acts);
7. Lexical pragmatics and metaphor;
8. Idioms (degree of compositionality, the syntactic properties of idioms, idiom types, idiom variants and linguistic processing, how idioms are learned);
9. Proverbs (the linguistic properties of proverbs, the logic of proverbs, proverbs and thought disorders, proverbs - manifestations of metaphorical schemes of thought);
10. The pragmatics of irony;
11. The pragmatics of humour.
Type of course
Learning outcomes
Acquiring knowledge
1. The student learns linguistic terminology as well as basic concepts and principles of linguistics, with the focus on pragmatics.
2. The student learns linguistic methodology practised in the U.S. and the U.K.
3. The student expands his/her knowledge of English pragmatics and develops his/her analytical skills.
4. The student expands his/her knowledge about the levels and processes of communication in English.
5. The student learns how to use research tools and research techniques of pragmatics.
Acquiring expertise
1. The student acquires the expertise of how to use linguistic methodology in research projects.
2. The student can critically and effectively apply his knowledge of pragmatics in communication, teaching and his/her own research.
Acquiring social skills
1. The student acquires the understanding of professional standards, especially the understanding of the ever changing environment in research and as well as the understanding of the importance of continuous education.
2. The student has the ability to identify, define and solve problems.
3. The student acquires social skills and understands the need to build social ties and engage in cooperation in the effort of making the world a better place.
Linguistic skills: B2
Assessment criteria
Requirements:
1. Follow-up exercises.
2. Term paper.
Bibliography
Brown, P. & S. C. Levinson. "Politeness: some universals in language usage", in: A. Jaworski & n. Coupland (eds). 1999. The Discourse Reader. London and New York: Routledge. 321-335.
Gibbs, R. W. 2001. "Proverbial themes we live by". Poetics 29: 167-188.
Glucksberg, S. 2001. "Idioms: from metaphors to "just long words", in: S. Glucksberg. 2001. Understanding Figurative Language. From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford University Press.
Grice, P. "Logic and conversation", "Further notes on logic and conversation", in P. Grice. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Huang, Y. 2007. Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Leech, G. 1983: Principles of Pragmatics. Penguin. (Selected fragments).
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1998. "Relevance and irony", in: R. Carston & S. Uchida. 1998. Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 283-93.
Wilson, D. & D. Sperber. 2002: "Relevance theory". UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 14: 249-287.
Wilson, D. 2004. "Relevance and lexical pragmatics". UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 16.
Yus, F. 2003. "Humour and the search for relevance". Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1295-1331.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: