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Module Content

This module is an introduction to the study of pragmatics. It covers the nature of communication, the relation between language and communication, and some recent approaches to the study of communication.

Teaching Delivery

The module is taught by 1 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week.

Indicative Topics

Indicative lecture topics are based on module content in 2023/24, subject to possible changes.

Module Aims and/or Objectives

The main aims are: (1) to develop an understanding of the kinds of pragmatic principles that regulate human communication and utterance interpretation, (2) to look at the interaction of these principles with the semantics of the linguistic expressions employed and with the speaker-hearer context, and (3) to investigate the many aspects of utterance meaning that go well beyond the linguistically-encoded meaning. Examples of such pragmatically derived meaning are conversational implicatures, reference assignment and non-literal meaning, including metaphor, metonymy and irony, a subset of which are examined in the course, differing from year to year. Among the different theoretical approaches considered are Grice's logic of conversation and Sperber and Wilson's cognitively-based Relevance Theory.

The main objectives are: (1) to provide students with a basic understanding of the nature of human communication and the ways in which it transcends linguistically-encoded meaning, (2) to ensure a good grasp of the main tenets of the Relevance Theory account of utterance interpretation, and (3) to develop in students the ability to apply the theoretical principles in analysing particular communicative exchanges that may include implicated meaning, non-literal meaning and other components of content that are not derivable from the language used alone.