1. Defining pragmatics
Lesson 1: The nature and scope of pragmatics. Defining pragmatics: sense, reference, intentionality. Utterance meaning. The place of pragmatics within linguistic theory.
2. Language and Action: The theory of speech acts
Lesson 2: Austin’s theory: performatives and constatives; felicity conditions; locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
Lesson 3: Searle’s theory: constitutive and regulatory rules; classification of speech acts; conditions of satisfaction of speech acts; indirect speech acts
3. Bridging the gap between literal and implied meaning: Gricean pragmatics
Lesson 4: Conventional and conversational implicature; types of implicature; the Cooperative Principle and its maxims; ways of exploting conversational maxims; properties of implicature.
Lesson 5: Inferential pragmatics and figurative uses of language: metaphor, metonymy, irony, hyperbole, etc.
4. Bridging the gap between literal and implied meaning: Post-Gricean pragmatics
Lesson 6: Pragmatic scales. The Principle of Politeness: The maxims of Tact, Generosity, Approbation, Modesty, Agreement, Sympathy; other approaches to politeness.
Lesson 7: The Textual Rhetoric. The Principles of Processibility, Clarity, Economy, Expressivity and their maxims.
Lesson 8: Revelance Theory: code models and inferential models of communication; some basic notions within Relevance Theory; the Principle of Relevance; explicatures and implicatures; ad hoc concept construction.