LEARNING OUTCOMES

Pragmatics is the study of the relationship between language and context and more specifically of how contextual factors interact with linguistic meaning in the interpretation of utterances. The aim of the course is to introduce students to the main themes of pragmatics: implicit communication, speech acts, contextual dependence, conversational mechanisms and the relationship between mind, brain and pragmatics.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the main themes of pragmatics: the implicit, speech acts, contextual dependence, conversational mechanisms and the relationship between mind, brain and pragmatics. At the end of the course, students will be able to identify the main pragmatic phenomena, illustrate the theories on their functioning and understand the experimental data that account for the way in which the human mind and brain process the production and understanding of verbal language.

Further educational objectives: - Acquire a greater ability to manage one's social interactions with a collaborative attitude, constructive communication and dialogical skills.
- Demonstrate work autonomy, ability to manage primary literature, argumentative ability and collaborative, coordination and negotiation attitude.

PREREQUISITES

The teaching assumes a basic knowledge of logic and the philosophy of language.

Attendance is strongly recommended.

TEACHING METHODS

Teaching will be provided through lectures held by the teacher.

The course will alternate lectures held by the teacher with presentations in class held by the attending students.

Students are required to register on Aulaweb, where useful materials for the course will be uploaded.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course is divided into two parts.

In the first part, a definition of pragmatics and of the concepts of meaning and communication will be provided, after which, the main philosophical and linguistic theories on the following pragmatic phenomena will be illustrated: the implicit (implicature, figurative language), the dontextual dependence (deixis, theories of deixis, the semantic/pragmatic distinction), presuppositions (presuppositional triggers, the projection of presuppositions), speech acts (illocution, classification of speech acts), conversation analysis and discourse analysis.

The second part of the course will be devoted to experimental pragmatics, ie the experimental investigation of the cognitive processes involved in the daily use of language. During the lessons, an introduction to this new field of study in the framework of philosophy and cognitive sciences will be provided. The discipline's own methodologies, the main theories and the most salient experimental data on the production and understanding of phenomena such as metaphor, irony, humor and other implicit meanings will be presented. In addition, the relationship between pragmatics, mind and brain will be discussed, as well as the development, decay and impairments of pragmatic skills across the life span and in pathology.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foreign students are kindly required to contatct Prof. Domaneschi before the beginning of the course