Linguistic Pragmatics

Discourse analysis and pragmatics are the subfields of linguistics that investigate language as it is used in real-life contexts. The focus of this course is on the following question: What do people do with language, and how do they do it? One goal is to demonstate how the results of such investigations are relevant for a number of concrete problems in human communication. Some of the more specific questions we will explore are as follows: What distinguishes discourse analysis and pragmatics from each other? What is their relation to the other branches of linguistics? How can the two fields contibute to the establishment of a paradigm for interdisciplinary and intercultural studies? Prerequisite: Ling 170D or permission of instructor.