The aim of this course is providing students with the basic theoretical notions of pragmatics and discourse analysis as well as the practical tools to analyze written and spoken texts from a pragmatics perspective. In addition, the pragmatic functions of codeswitching and plurilingual phenomena in bilingual communities and globalized contexts will be illustrated.
The course will focus on the linguistic analysis of spoken and written texts. The main concepts of pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language alternation/plurilingual phenomena will be illustrated.
The main topics covered will be:
- Definition of pragmatics and discourse analysis
- Text, context, and co-text
- Cohesion and coherence
- Inferences: entailments, presuppositions, implicatures
- Speech acts
- Cooperation principle and conversational maxims
- Conversation analysis
- The notion of face
Codeswitching and plurilingual phenomena
- Traditional definition of codeswitching and its pragmatic functions
- Beyond codeswitching: language contact and plurilingual phenomena in a globalized society
- Plurilingual phenomena in international communication: pragmatic functions
The course will be delivered through lectures; active involvement of the students is encouraged.
Compulsory biliographic references:
Lesson slides (downloadable from the Moodle platform)
Cutting, Joan. 2014, Pragmatics: A Resource book for Students. London: Routledge (except sections 6 and 8)
Peccei, Jean S. 1999. Pragmatics. Padstow: Routledge.
Vettorel, P., Franceschi V. (2016). English as a Lingua Franca. Plurilingual Repertoires and Language Choices in Computer-Mediated Communication. In Lopriore, L. e E. Grazzi (eds.). Intercultural Communication. New Perspectives from ELF. Rome: Roma Tre Press. 301-320.
Secondary bibliographic references (non-compulsory)
Jenkins, Jennifer (2014). Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students. Abingdon, Routledge. pp. 2-16; 27-35; 41-45.
stampata
García, O., Wei, L. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. UK: Palgrave MacMillan (Capitoli 1-2)
Paltridge, B. 2006. Discourse analysis : an introduction. London: Continuum. (Chapter 1)
Students who are not able to attend lessons should contact the instructor to obtain the password to access the course's Moodle area.
Pre-requisites: In order to access the exam, students need to have passed the computer test of the C1 level, English Language 1 and English Literature 1.
The final exam will be a written aiming to assess the student's acquisition of the contents of the course and the ability to analyze brief conversational exchanges / written passages.
