The first class will commence on 20th January, 2023 (Friday), 12:30 - 14:20 at CPD-LG.09.

People do not always say what they mean. So, how do we understand one another if speakers regularly say something other than what they mean? Why don't people just say what they mean? We shall answer these and other questions regarding communication in ordinary and professional/workplace settings in this introductory course to Pragmatics. Some of the topics we shall be concerned with in this course include different levels of meaning, speaker's intention, interpretation and understanding of utterances; the role of context in utterance interpretations; speech and communicative acts; conversational implicature; presupposition and politeness.

 

1. Introduction to pragmatics: defining pragmatics, its origin and relationships with other disciplines;
2. Context, deixis, reference;
3. Presupposition;
4. Conversational implicature. The cooperative principle, conversational maxims;
5. Transcribing spoken interactions
6. Speech acts;
7. Politeness;
8. Cultural pragmatics.

 

1. To introduce students to the main pragmatic theoretical concepts.
2. To introduce students to historical and recent developments in the field.
3. To enable students to engage in pragmatic analysis of spoken data using the theoretical concepts and methodological foundations that they have acquired in class.

 

The course is comprised of weekly lectures and tutorials. Arrangement of tutorials will be finalized after the add-drop period when the number of registered students is known.

 

Assessment for the course is 100% coursework. It includes the following:

1. Participation in tutorial classes (20%).
2. In class multiple choice quiz (25%).
3. In class presentation (25%).
4. Final report (30%).

 

There is no required textbook for this course. The required and recommended readings will be provided by the course instructor during the course.