Introduction to Pragmatics

Course Description

This course provides an accessible introduction to pragmatics, which deals with how speakers and hearers use language to communicate meaning in real-life discourse contexts. The course will deal with two broad issues in pragmatics: (i) how meaning can depend on the context of use, and (ii) the contrast between what is said and what is communicated. In addressing the first issue, we will discuss the phenomenon of deixis (or indexicality), which leads into puzzles such as the following: It seems that whenever and wherever anyone says "I am here right now", what they are saying is true; but then how do we explain answering maching messages saying "I am not here right now"? The first part will also cover presupposition, which is manifest in loaded questions like "Have you quit smoking?" -- suppose the addressee had never been a smoker! Addressing the issue of what is said vs. what is communicated, we will discuss the famous Gricean conversational maxims, which will help us explain why, for example, raving about the wonderful clarity of a student's handwriting in a college recommendation letter manages to communicate something quite negative (via conversational implicature). We will also discuss various kinds of speech acts, such as requesting, asking, and ordering, as well as indirect speech acts, and use a theory of politeness to explain why, for example, people choose "Could you pass the salt?" over plain old "Pass the salt".

• Assessment Criteria

The course reader (a.k.a. "compendium") is available for sale at the SOL reception desk. This is the only thing you need to buy; there is no textbook for this course.

Schedule

1. Grice and Implicature

Tuesday, November 16th, 11:00-13:00, H339

Handout: here.

• Grice 1975: Logic and Conversation

• Questions on Gricean Implicature

• "Intellectual" blonde joke:
  
• Seinfeld car rental clip [transcript, by David Beaver]:
  
  

2. Implication Relations

Wednesday, November 24th, 15:00-17:00, H339

• Additional handout on Grice: What is a conversational implicature?
• Logic example with slot machines (Powerpoint)
• Handout on logic and implication relations.

• Kearns (2000), Semantics, Chapter 2: First Order logic, 2.1 and 2.2 (pp. 25-35).
• Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (1990), Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics: Chapter 1 (just section 3, pp. 17--33)

• Questions on Implication Relations

3. Presupposition

Tuesday, November 30th, 12:00-14:00, H405

• Karttunen 1973: Presuppositions of Compound Sentences

• Questions on Presupposition Projection

• Levinson's list of presupposition triggers

4. Presupposition, continued

Friday, December 3rd, 15:00-17:00, H239a

• Fillmore 1971, Deixis I

• Questions on deixis

• Fillmore 1971, May we come in?, Time, Coming and Going

5. Deixis

Friday, December 10th, 11:00-13:00, H405

• Plan for rest of course + project ideas
• Science in 3 Easy Steps
• Presentation about this Monday

• Email Liz with a project idea. The earlier, the better. Ideally, set up a time to meet and talk about it.

• Listen to David Kaplan's talk on the meaning of "ouch" and "oops":
  

• Questions on "The meaning of oops and ouch"

• Kaplan 1977, Demonstratives

6. Indexicality

Thursday, December 16th, 11:00-13:00, H405

• Kaplan's theory of indexicals

• Rough draft due Monday, January 10th
• Class presentation on Friday, January 14th
• Final draft due Monday, January 17th

7. Class presentations

Friday, January 14th, 15:00-17:00, H339