230200 Political pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and societal aspects (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

In this seminar, we primarily discuss semantic and pragmatic aspects of political language, dogwhistles and language employing presuppositions being two examples of the phenomena we will be dealing with. While dogwhistles allow for communicating one neutral message to an out-group and a more "loaded" message to an in-group, language employing presuppositions seems particularly well-suited to persuade an audience to assume certain presumable "facts" while still allowing the speaker to deny having intended to communicate those pieces of information.

Teilnahmevoraussetzungen, notwendige Vorkenntnisse

An introduction to the semantic and pragmatic phenomena of interest will be provided in the seminar. However, a basic interest in linguistic approaches to semantics and pragmatics would be beneficial.