The Pragmatics of Interaction

Course description:

The course builds on the courses in General Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax and Semantics and introduces students to the problems of understanding contextual, implied or vague meanings. The list of topics includes basic pragmatic categories and principles such as: deixis, presupposition and implicature, relevance and politeness. During the seminar sessions students get hands -on experience of different methods of pragmatic analysis and develop skills in analyzing speech in context and uncovering hidden meanings on utterance and discourse level. The course is student-oriented and involves autonomous reading and discussion of papers by key researchers in the field. It has a direct bearing on the practice of translation and foreign language  learning and aims at enhancing  students’ FL interpretative skills. Students’ progress is controlled through a number of homework assignments, reports on independent work on texts  and reviews on selected resource materials. Students’ achievement is assessed  by an oral exam  which includes a question on some of the topics discussed  during the course and pragmatic analysis of  a sample text. A reasonable proficiency in General Linguistics and Semantics is a prerequisite for the course.