An Introduction to Pragmatics & Discourse Analysis

Description

Course Description:

This 12-week course offers a comprehensive introduction to Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, two key fields in linguistics that examine how meaning is constructed in language use beyond individual words and sentences. The course will explore how context influences meaning, the role of speaker intention, how conversation works, and how larger units of language (discourse) function. Through theory and practice, students will learn to analyze language in social interaction and understand how discourse shapes and reflects social realities.

Course Objectives:

• Understand the basic principles of pragmatics and discourse analysis.
• Analyze how context, speaker intentions, and social factors shape meaning.
• Explore key concepts such as implicature, speech acts, presupposition, and deixis.
• Examine how larger units of text and conversation are structured and interpreted.
• Gain skills in analyzing spoken and written discourse.
• Understand the relationship between language, power, and identity in discourse.

Weekly Outline:

Week 1: Introduction to Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

• Overview of the course.
• Definitions: What is pragmatics? What is discourse analysis?
• Key differences between sentence-level meaning (semantics) and utterance meaning (pragmatics).
• Introduction to discourse: Spoken and written forms of communication.
• Reading: Chapter on the basics of pragmatics and discourse analysis.

Week 2: Context and Meaning in Pragmatics

• The role of context in understanding meaning (physical, linguistic, social, and cognitive context).
• Deictic expressions: Person, time, place, and discourse deixis.
• How context determines the interpretation of utterances.
• Practice: Analyzing deictic expressions in everyday language use.

Week 3: Speech Acts – Actions Performed through Language

• Introduction to speech act theory (Austin and Searle).
• Locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
• Categories of speech acts: Directives, commissives, declarations, expressives, etc.
• Indirect speech acts and how context affects interpretation.
• Practice: Identifying and analyzing speech acts in conversation.

Week 4: Implicature and Grice’s Cooperative Principle

• Introduction to implicature and Grice’s Cooperative Principle.
• The four maxims: Quantity, Quality, Relevance, and Manner.
• Conversational implicature: How speakers imply meanings that go beyond what is said.
• Practice: Identifying implicatures in everyday conversation and written texts.

Week 5: Presupposition and Entailment

• Difference between presupposition and entailment.
• Types of presuppositions (existential, factive, lexical, etc.).
• Triggers of presuppositions (definite descriptions, factive verbs, etc.).
• How presupposition works in discourse and the role of shared knowledge.
• Practice: Analyzing presuppositions in media and political speeches.

Week 6: Politeness Theory and Face

• Introduction to politeness theory (Brown & Levinson).
• Positive face and negative face: Needs for autonomy and approval.
• Politeness strategies: Bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record.
• Face-threatening acts and how politeness mitigates them in discourse.
• Practice: Analyzing politeness strategies in real-life interactions.

Week 7: Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Structures of Texts

• What is discourse? How is it different from a sentence or utterance?
• Discourse markers: How they organize spoken and written texts.
• Coherence and cohesion: How texts are structured to make sense.
• Analyzing text organization and the role of discourse markers.
• Practice: Analyzing the coherence and structure of different types of texts.

Week 8: Conversation Analysis – Turn-Taking and Repair

• Basic principles of conversation analysis.
• Turn-taking mechanisms in conversation: How speakers manage turns.
• Adjacency pairs: Question-answer, greeting-greeting, etc.
• Repair strategies in conversation: Fixing breakdowns in communication.
• Practice: Transcribing and analyzing natural conversation.

Week 9: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) – Language, Power, and Ideology

• Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, Wodak, Van Dijk).
• How language reflects and shapes power relations and ideology.
• Analyzing discourse in media, politics, and institutions.
• Concepts of hegemony, dominance, and social inequality in language.
• Practice: CDA of political speeches or media articles.

Week 10: Genre and Register in Discourse

• Understanding genre: Types of discourse (e.g., academic, legal, media, conversational).
• Register: How language varies depending on formality, field, tenor, and mode.
• How genre and register affect the interpretation of discourse.
• Practice: Analyzing differences in language use across genres (e.g., news articles vs. personal blogs).

Week 11: Identity, Power, and Discourse

• The role of discourse in constructing social identities (gender, class, ethnicity).
• How language choices reflect power dynamics and social roles.
• Analyzing how discourse constructs authority, expertise, and solidarity.
• Practice: Analyzing discourse from an identity and power perspective in media and social interactions.

Week 12: Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis in Digital Communication

• How pragmatics and discourse analysis apply to digital communication (emails, social media, chat).
• The impact of technology on discourse: Abbreviations, emojis, and multimedia.
• Pragmatics of online politeness, face, and speech acts.
• Practice: Analyzing digital conversations and the use of multimodal discourse strategies.

Assessment Methods:

• Quizzes: Weekly quizzes to test understanding of key concepts (deixis, implicature, speech acts, etc.).
• Assignments: Analysis of spoken and written texts using the methods covered (implicature, speech acts, presupposition, CDA, etc.).
• Transcription Project: Transcribe and analyze a short conversation using conversation analysis techniques.
• Final Project: Critical analysis of a piece of discourse (political speech, media article, or digital conversation) using multiple discourse analysis methods.

Recommended Texts and Resources:

• Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
• Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
• Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press.
• Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (2001). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Longman.

This outline offers a balance between theoretical understanding and practical analysis, providing students with the tools to analyze language in various contexts, from everyday conversation to political discourse.