Schedule

Date

Topic

Reading

Blog Topic

Oct 17

Politeness

Test 1 DUE Politeness – Due Oct 24

Oct 22

Politeness

Yule Chpt 7

 

Politeness – Due Oct 24

Oct 24

Politeness

Watch this Ted Talk on British vs. American politeness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbu-eMcEF3s

Review the Brown and Levinson Document/Graphic on the course website.

 

Politeness – Due Oct 24

Oct 29

Humor

Ted Talk: Chris Bliss Comedy is Translation Humor Due Oct 31

Oct 31

Humor

For more help organizing these ideas, see Theories of Humor http://www.pragmaticshumour.net/makingsenseofhumour/theories_of_humour.htm – (advance links are at the bottom) Humor Due Oct 31

Nov 5

Humor

   

Nov 7

Speech Acts

   

Nov 12

Speech Acts    

Nov 14

Research Paper/Speech Acts Yule Chpt 6 Humor Due Nov 19

Nov 19

Speech Acts Yule Chpt 6 Test 2 DUE Speech Acts Due Nov 26

Nov 21

Speech Acts   Speech Acts Due Nov 26

Nov 26

  DATA DUE

LAST DAY TO TURN IN LATE WORK!

 

 

Nov 28

NO CLASS    

Dec 3

Conversation Structure Yule Chpt 7  

Dec 5

Conversation Structure http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html Conversation Structure Due Dec 5

Dec 10

Discourse and Culture Yule Chpt 9  

Dec 12

Presentation Test 3 DUE Culture Due Dec 12

Dec 17, 5pm

Paper Due    

August

August 29

Introduction to Class

  1. Syllabus
  2. Major Assignments
  3. Pragmatics is Communication
  4. Structure of what we are looking at
    1. Context

i.     Situational

ii.     Background Knowledge

iii.     Co-textual

  1. Language and the context

i.     Deixis

ii.     Exophora

iii.     Cohesion

Read:    Yule Chpt 1 & watch the full version of the Steven Pinker Ted Talk

Blog Topic: NONE

September

September 3

Context

  1. Steven Pinker RSA Animate
  2. Saying what we mean and don’t mean for many reasons
  3. Role of relationships and power in language
  4. Nonverbal communication, nonconventional, non symbolic meaning
  5. Isn’t this just the study of everything?
  6. Pragmatics Wastebasket

Read:    Yule Chpt 2 & Gee 1.1-Grammar Interlude #2 (ppg 1-17)

Blog: Inferred meaning – Why we say the things we say. Due Sept 10

September 5

NO CLASSES

September 10

Deixis

  1. What is Deixis and why is it interesting?
    1. Is ‘that’ out of stock?
    2. She said, he said
    3. Indexing the world
      1. Person deixis

i.     Cross cultural perspectives

  1. Temporal Deixis

i.     Be back in an hour

  1. Spatial deixis

i.     It’s not here or there, but everywhere!

Read:    Gee 1.5-1.8

Blog: Deixis Due Sept 12

September 12

Finish up Deixis

  1. Intonation & The frame problem
    1. How do we know what someone means just by their words?
    2. Is intonation important?
    3. How much background information do we have to have in order to understand each other?
    4. How is background information created in a short skit?
    5. Exercise with the Frame Tool

Read:    Yule Chpt 3

Blog: Reference Due Sept 19

September 17

Reference and Inference

  1. What’s so special about referring expressions
    1. A rose by any other name
    2. Speaker’s goals
    3. Speakers beliefs
    4. Inference
    5. How a reference gets understood
      1. Wanda went to Kroger.
      2. Wait! Who’s Wanda and Where did she go?
      3. Attributives
        1. We need a tall person to fix the light.
        2. ANY tall person will do.
        3. Co-text… Just like the frame problem
        4. Anaphoric and Cataphoric reference
        5. Anaphoric = she/he/they/it after the fact
        6. Cataphoric = she/he/they/it before the fact

Read: Class chosen Ted Talk, NPR segment, movie, etc.

Blog: Reference Due Sept 19

September 19

Reference and Inference examples

  1. Practice how common ground was established and how Reference/Inference get situated using the
  2. Making Strange Tool
  3. Frame Tool
  4. Deixis Tool
  5. Applying theory to media

Read: Yule Chpt 4

Blog: Presuppositions Due Sept 26

September 24

Presupposition and Entailment

  1. Assumptions
  2. Potential
  3. Existential
  4. Factive
  5. Lexical
  6. Structural
  7. Non-factive
  8. Counter-factual

Read: Simons Presupposing pg 1-10

Blog: Presuppositions Due Sept 26

September 26

Presupposition and Entailment examples

  1. Projection Problem
  2. Ordered entailments
  3. Yule pg 99

Read: Gee 3.14 (ppg 126-128)  And this short webpage: http://ozarque.livejournal.com/365085.html

Blog: Research proposal Due Oct 1!!

October

October 1

Research Proposal due!

Presuppositional Verbs

  1. Factive Verbs
  2. Non Factive Verbs
  3. Why the difference
  4. Exercises with “my computer knows…”

Read: Yule Chpt 5

Blog:

October 3

Cooperation and Implicature

  1. Grice
  2. Maxims
    1. Violate
    2. Flout
    3. Adhere
    4. Why do we have to cooperate so much?
      1. Communication w/o cooperation game

Read: Gee 4.2 Situated meanings & cooperation   Glance over this website – it’s a thorough overview of what we are covering tomorrow

http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~mu65qev/wikolin/index.php?title=Horn_scale

Blog: Cooperation Due Oct 10

October 8

Cooperation and Implicature

  1. Horn
  2. I broke a finger
  3. Did you finish changing the lightbulbs?
    1. I changed 5…

Read:

Blog:  Cooperation Due Oct 10

October 10

Practice picking out what Grice has to say

  1. Cross Cultural Speech Acts
  2. Practice
  3. Court scene

Read: Yule Chpt 6

Blog: Test 1

October 15

            CUNY Monday – NO CLASS

October 17

Test 1 due

Politeness

  1. Face saving
  2. Positive politeness
  3. Negative Politeness

Read: Watch this Ted Talk on British vs. American politeness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbu-eMcEF3s

Review the Brown and Levinson Document/Graphic on the course website.

Blog: Politeness Due Oct 24

October 22

Review politeness examples

  1. Practice with politeness
  2. What are the politeness operators
    1. Male vs. Female Speech
    2. Is there ever a time when not to be polite?

Read: Watch this Ted Talk on Euphemisms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCTgNyA3DY

Review the CARLA website on Pragmatics and Speech Acts – Japanese and Spanish

http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/sp_pragmatics/considerations/politeness.html

Blog:  Politeness Due Oct 24

October 24

Review politeness examples

Cross cultural Politeness

  1. Using CARLA Resources
    1. Is there any underlying principle of politeness?
    2. Does Brown and Levinson hold up?

Read: Yule Chpt 8

Blog: Humor Due Oct 31

October 29

Humor

  1. Theories of humor
    1. Superiority
    2. Relief
    3. Incongruity

Read: Ted Talk: Chris Bliss Comedy is Translation

Blog: Humor Due Oct 31

October 31

Humor

  1. Peter McGraw What Makes Things Funny
    1. Unexpected
    2. Benign
    3. Malign

Read: For more help organizing these ideas, see Theories of Humor http://www.pragmaticshumour.net/makingsenseofhumour/theories_of_humour.htm – (advance links are at the bottom)

Blog:

November

November 5

DATA CORPUS DUE

Humor

Review Humor examples

  1. Analysis of humor
    1. Does the theory hold up?
  2. Jokes and Slapstick vs. Irony and Puns…

Read: Yule Chpt 9

Blog: Speech Acts Due Nov 12

November 7

Test 2 distrbuted

Speech Acts

  1. Searle
  2. Austin
  3. Doing things with words
    1. Locutionary
    2. Illocutionary
    3. Perlocutionary
    4. Doing more things with words
    5. Felicity Conditions
    6. Performative Hypothesis

Read: Gee 3.3, 3.6

Blog: Speech Acts Due Nov 12

 

November 12

More Speech Acts

  1. Practice Analyzing Speech Acts
  2. What can be built with words? What can’t? Why?
    1. Is this changing?
    2. The Warriors Movie… Threats and promises
    3. Yule pg 103: promise vs. threat

Read:

Blog: NONE – Test 2 Due Nov 14


November 14

TEST 2 DUE

 

John McWhorter Colloquium at CUNY-GC 5-7pm (at 5th & 34th)

“Is There No Such Thing as a Creole?”

Review Examples

  1. Classifying Speech Acts – let’s get a handle on these…

Read: Yule Chpt 7

Blog: Conversational Structure Due Nov 21

Nov 19

Conversational Structure

  1. How and why do we let other people talk?
  2. Floors
  3. Turn Taking
  4. Adjacency Pairs
    1. Are some conversations more difficult than others?
    2. Why?
  5. What’s the correlate with text/chat?

Read:  http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html

Nov 21

Conversational Structure – analyzing the movies

  1. Class choice of a movie
    1. Analyzing the discourse pattern

Read: Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor * Chapter 1 Available on the Course Website or through the library (e-book)

Blog: Conversational Structure Due Nov 21

November 26

DATA DUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

LAST DAY TO TURN IN LATE WORK!

 

November 28

Happy Thanksgiving!

December December 3

Discourse and Culture

  1. How we talk to each other (or don’t)
    1. Bringing all the theories together

Read:

Test 3

 

December 5

Review Culture examples

Discourse and Culture

  1. Practice how to help people communication

 

December 10

            IN CLASS WORK DAY – computer lab?

December 12

Test 3 DUE    

PRESENTATIONS

December 17

            5pm, Paper due

 

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