This seminar will be dealing with major issues in linguistic pragmatics: speech act theory, conversation analysis, conversational maxims, implicature, and deixis. We will also investigate approaches to politeness, irony, humour, conflict talk, emotive communication, and, last but not least, miscommunication. Recommended preparatory reading:
- Bublitz, Wolfram, & Christian R. Hoffmann (2019), Englische Pragmatik. Eine Einführung, 3., neu bearb. und erw. Aufl., Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag,
is highly recommendable but in German. My favourite introduction in English is
- Levinson, Stephen C. (1983), Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
which obviously does not cover some more recent developments but all the 'classic' basics one needs to know for a start.
There will be weekly (or almost weekly) live course meetings online via Zoom, at the time indicated here. In addition, and apart from the Prüfungsform relevant according to your Prüfungs- und Studienordnung, there will be (bi- or)weekly reading and writing assignments which will take you about two to three hours each to complete.
- Trainer/in: Wolfgang Falkner