230042 Pragmatics (S) (WiSe 2012/2013)

"Can you clean up your room?"
As teenagers, most of us will have been asked this question by our parents. Most probably, when you were asked this question, you knew that your parents weren't enquiring about your ability to clean your room, but that their question was meant as a request, demanding you to clean your room, even though grammatically it was presented in the form of a question. Why did your parents present their demand as a question? How did you know what the intention of their question was?

In this class, students will be introduced to various pragmatic theories which aim to explain how language is used in context and how meaning is created in social interaction.

We will explore the intricacies of language use in social contexts with the aim to gain an understanding of how people work collaboratively to express and understand the often implicit intentions of each others' utterances.

Furthermore, we will examine how factors such as culture and foreign language proficiency can affect communication and what happens when communication breaks down as a result of misunderstandings based on pragmatic language use.