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
- Syllabus
- Major Assignments
- Pragmatics is Communication
- Structure of what we are looking at
- Context
i. Situational
ii. Background Knowledge
iii. Co-textual
- 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
- Steven Pinker RSA Animate
- Saying what we mean and don’t mean for many reasons
- Role of relationships and power in language
- Nonverbal communication, nonconventional, non symbolic meaning
- Isn’t this just the study of everything?
- 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
- What is Deixis and why is it interesting?
- Is ‘that’ out of stock?
- She said, he said
- Indexing the world
- Person deixis
i. Cross cultural perspectives
- Temporal Deixis
i. Be back in an hour
- 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
- Intonation & The frame problem
- How do we know what someone means just by their words?
- Is intonation important?
- How much background information do we have to have in order to understand each other?
- How is background information created in a short skit?
- Exercise with the Frame Tool
Read: Yule Chpt 3
Blog: Reference Due Sept 19
September 17
Reference and Inference
- What’s so special about referring expressions
- A rose by any other name
- Speaker’s goals
- Speakers beliefs
- Inference
- How a reference gets understood
- Wanda went to Kroger.
- Wait! Who’s Wanda and Where did she go?
- Attributives
- We need a tall person to fix the light.
- ANY tall person will do.
- Co-text… Just like the frame problem
- Anaphoric and Cataphoric reference
- Anaphoric = she/he/they/it after the fact
- 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
- Practice how common ground was established and how Reference/Inference get situated using the
- Making Strange Tool
- Frame Tool
- Deixis Tool
- Applying theory to media
Read: Yule Chpt 4
Blog: Presuppositions Due Sept 26
September 24
Presupposition and Entailment
- Assumptions
- Potential
- Existential
- Factive
- Lexical
- Structural
- Non-factive
- Counter-factual
Read: Simons Presupposing pg 1-10
Blog: Presuppositions Due Sept 26
September 26
Presupposition and Entailment examples
- Projection Problem
- Ordered entailments
- 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
- Factive Verbs
- Non Factive Verbs
- Why the difference
- Exercises with “my computer knows…”
Read: Yule Chpt 5
Blog:
October 3
Cooperation and Implicature
- Grice
- Maxims
- Violate
- Flout
- Adhere
- Why do we have to cooperate so much?
- 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
- Horn
- I broke a finger
- Did you finish changing the lightbulbs?
- I changed 5…
Read:
Blog: Cooperation Due Oct 10
October 10
Practice picking out what Grice has to say
- Cross Cultural Speech Acts
- Practice
- Court scene
Read: Yule Chpt 6
Blog: Test 1
October 15
CUNY Monday – NO CLASS
October 17
Test 1 due
Politeness
- Face saving
- Positive politeness
- 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
- Practice with politeness
- What are the politeness operators
- Male vs. Female Speech
- 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
- Using CARLA Resources
- Is there any underlying principle of politeness?
- Does Brown and Levinson hold up?
Read: Yule Chpt 8
Blog: Humor Due Oct 31
October 29
Humor
- Theories of humor
- Superiority
- Relief
- Incongruity
Read: Ted Talk: Chris Bliss Comedy is Translation
Blog: Humor Due Oct 31
October 31
Humor
- Peter McGraw What Makes Things Funny
- Unexpected
- Benign
- 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
- Analysis of humor
- Does the theory hold up?
- Jokes and Slapstick vs. Irony and Puns…
Read: Yule Chpt 9
Blog: Speech Acts Due Nov 12
November 7
Test 2 distrbuted
Speech Acts
- Searle
- Austin
- Doing things with words
- Locutionary
- Illocutionary
- Perlocutionary
- Doing more things with words
- Felicity Conditions
- Performative Hypothesis
Read: Gee 3.3, 3.6
Blog: Speech Acts Due Nov 12
November 12
More Speech Acts
- Practice Analyzing Speech Acts
- What can be built with words? What can’t? Why?
- Is this changing?
- The Warriors Movie… Threats and promises
- 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
- Classifying Speech Acts – let’s get a handle on these…
Read: Yule Chpt 7
Blog: Conversational Structure Due Nov 21
Nov 19
Conversational Structure
- How and why do we let other people talk?
- Floors
- Turn Taking
- Adjacency Pairs
- Are some conversations more difficult than others?
- Why?
- 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
- Class choice of a movie
- 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
- How we talk to each other (or don’t)
- Bringing all the theories together
Read:
Test 3
December 5
Review Culture examples
Discourse and Culture
- 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