Learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course unit the student will understand and engage in scientific discussion of pragmatics, and in particular of information structure, an area of inquiry critical to our understanding of how communication between individuals is constructed in real-time interaction and in texts. The course will provide students with the conceptual skills to investigate these matters creatively on their own, and to produce original research based on their own related interests after the course has been successfully completed.

Contents

This course unit is an introduction to linguistic pragmatics, with a particular focus on a range of information structuring processes in informal native English discourse. These include the foregrounding and backgrounding of elements within utterances, involving non-canonical word order, the insertion of discourse particles, and intonational strategies. In addition, the course unit explores how these pragmatic alternations are interpreted by non-native speakers, how competing strategies from other languages may be transferred into non-native English usage, and how these competing strategies may persist in 'ethnic' native varieties of English.

Evaluation

Belongs to following study modules

2018–2019

Teaching

Archived Teaching Schedule. Please refer to current Teaching Shedule.

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