230200 Varietäten des Englischen: Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (S) (WiSe 2004/2005)

This class has the goal of looking at linguistic and paralinguistic (i.e. multi-modal) interaction over a variety of cross-cultural encounters such as greeting, paying compliments, thanking, complaining, apologizing, leave-taking, or others. One of the starting points will be Wierzbicka?s Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, which itself looks at communication within a variety of linguistically defined cultures.

We will try to go beyond Wierzbicka?s work in two ways. For one we will try to work in a multi-modal sense, using language as well as non-verbal interaction and semantic fields related to the communicative situation. The other aspect will be to look at interaction across cultural boundaries and not just within differing but self-contained cultures. The approach to culture to be used will be a relatively broad one: While it may include such variables as age, class, ethnicity, and gender within in single larger cultural units such as North America or the British Isles, there will also be the opportunity to look at communicative situations between members of these larger speech communities as well as further ones both inside and outside of the English-speaking world.