AJ3203 Pragmatics

Faculty of Education
Autumn 2017
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
doc. PhDr. Renata Povolná, Ph.D. (seminar tutor)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrátilová, Ph.D.
Department of English Language and Literature – Faculty of Education
Contact Person: Jana Popelková
Supplier department: Department of English Language and Literature – Faculty of Education
Prerequisites
Pragmatics can be taken by any student of English, preferably after functional and communicative syntax, and must be taken by all students in all the study programmes for secondary schools.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 8 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
The aim of the course labelled Pragmatics is to introduce students into the study of pragmatics, i.e. a linguistic discipline which views the language from the point of view of its users. In this respect the course will be contrasted especially with students previous study of syntax and semantics. The course concentrates on the most important issues connected with the study of pragmatics with the aim to make students acquainted with the possibilities how to encorporate their knowledge of pragmatics into their future daily teaching profession.
Syllabus
  • 1. Introduction to the study of pragmatics. 2. Deixis and distance. 3. Reference and inference. 4. Presupposition and entailment. 5. The cooperative principle. Conversational implicature. 6. Conventional implicature. 7. Conversation analysis. Features typical of spoken interaction. Conversational style. 8. Conversation and preference structure. 9. Speech acts and speech events. Performative hypothesis. 10. Direct and indirect speech acts. Speech act classification. 11. Politeness and interaction. Positive and negative politeness. 12. Discourse and culture. Discourse analysis.
Literature
    required literature
  • YULE, George. Pragmatics. First published. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, xiv, 138. ISBN 0194372073. info
  • THOMAS, Jenny. Meaning in interaction : an introduction to pragmatics. Harlow: Longman, 1995, xii, 224. ISBN 0582291518. info
  • YULE, George. The study of language [Yule, 1996]. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xiii, 294. ISBN 0-521-56851-X. info
    recommended literature
  • STENSTRÖM, Anna-Brita. An introduction to spoken interaction. 1st publ. London: Longman, 1994, ix, 238. ISBN 0582071305. info
  • BROWN, Gillian and George YULE. Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, xii, 288. ISBN 0521284759. info
Teaching methods
Mode of teaching: seminar The methods used in classes are presentations of new and problematic issues by the teacher, who provides students with some necessary theoretical background. This is always suplemented by many examples. Then, after discussing the given topic with their teacher, students are asked to prepare and simulate authentic conversational situations in which they are supposed to use structures and/or strategies under discussion. As for homework, students are supposed to study in advance relevant chapters from their textbooks and be ready for class discussions. Apart from that, students have to do various interactive moodle modules including quizzes designed particularly for their course.
Assessment methods
For the final exam, students must pass a written exam test which consists of three topics, different for every student, taken from the subject matter studied during the term, followed by a short discussion if necessary. Before the exam students have to pass successfully an on-line moodle test in the middle of the term. Moreover, all students are supposed to prepare a suggestion how to use pragmatics in their own teaching profession and try to apply their suggestion in a contact class.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
The course is taught: every week.
Note related to how often the course is taught: kombinované studium: každý druhý týden.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2018, Autumn 2019, autumn 2020, Autumn 2021, Autumn 2022, Autumn 2023, Autumn 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2017, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/ped/autumn2017/AJ3203