Pragmatics (Seminar Lange WiSe 22/23)

Seminar - Prof. Dr. Claudia Lange

More often than not, there is a gap between what we say and what we mean: we try to be polite; we use irony, sarcasm, humour; we exaggerate or resort to understatement, we speak metaphorically. The discipline of Pragmatics is concerned with studying meaning in context, trying to explain how we manage to recover speakers’ communicative intentions. We will begin by considering several approaches to the study of meaning in language and then zoom in on pragmatic theories which deal with how we create meanings in our everyday communicative interactions. Topics to be covered include politeness and impoliteness, speech acts past and present, irony, humour, intercultural pragmatics and the pragmatics of computer-mediated communication (CMC).

When: Thu 2. DS

Where: W48/004