Course: Pragmalinguistics – Seminar

ECTS credits: 2

Language: German

Duration: one semester

Status: elective

Course type: 2 hours of seminar

Enrolment requirements: course “Semantics of the Contemporary German Language”

Course description: This seminar is intended to introduce basic issues and concepts of pragmalinguistics. It covers following topics: basic issues and thematic focal points of pragmalinguistics, forms of language and communication behaviour, decisions and strategies applied when encoding a message in a particular communication situation, speech acts as elementary forms of communication, classification of speech acts, Grice’s conversational maxims, conversational implicatures, their emergence and communicative function, presuppositions, deictic elements in language, conversation analysis, turn-taking in a dialogue and other types of conversation, paralingual aspects of verbal communication.

Learning outcomes: Upon completion of the course students are expected to be able to: define basic issues and thematic focal points of pragmalinguistics, identify various speech acts, define Grice’s conversational maxims and recognise the adherence and violation of those maxims in a conversation, define the communicative function of conversational implicature and presupposition, analyse different forms of conversation by applying conversation analysis, knowingly apply different turn-taking strategies in a dialogue and other types of conversation.

Teaching methods: presentations, classroom discussion, protocols

Literature: S. Davis (1991): Pragmatics, A Reader, Oxford; G. Leech (1983): Principles of Pragmatics, Longman; S. C. Levinson (1994): Pragmatik, Tübingen; J. Meibauer (2001): Pragmatik, Stauffenburg; F. Liedke (1998): Grammatik der Illokution, Tübingen.

Evaluation Methods and Grading: class attendance, midterm exam, seminar paper