Postgraduate Course: Pragmatics of Linguistic Communication (PPLS11005)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 10 |
| Home subject area | Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course focuses on the way that meaning is derived in context, examining how listeners infer what is meant beyond what a speaker explicitly says. The course starts from the observation that linguistic forms are inherently, even necessarily, ambiguous, and the interpretation of ambiguous expressions therefore says a lot about the expectations listeners have for what speakers intend. Topics include the role of presupposition and implicature in language understanding, speakers' use of common ground, the processing of ambiguous and elided material, and the deduction of the implicit relationships that hold between sentences in a larger discourse. We will discuss how these phenomena are analysed within a range of different models - philosophical, computational, and psycholinguistic. The goal of the course is to consider a variety of pragmatic phenomena through the lens of human cognition and to ask how those phenomena are reflected in applied scenarios. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Understand and discuss important concepts in pragmatics
- Analyse naturally occurring linguistic data for both structure and function
- Evaluate different kinds of explanation in the field of pragmatics
- Apply pragmatic concepts in case studies of communication in society |
Assessment Information
1) coursework and short assignments (30%)
2) final essay (70%) |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Hannah Rohde
Tel: (0131 6)50 6802
Email: Hannah.Rohde@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
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