The aim of the course is to provide basic notions and theories concerning Pragmatics and Text linguistics. We will focus on the analysis of language in context, as well as on textual dimensions and types.
Course Prerequisites
Students are expected to have a basic knowledge of notions and categories of General Linguistics and must have attended at least a basic module of General Linguistics.
Teaching Methods
Lectures, slides, analysis of linguistic material.
Assessment Methods
Written exam based on the course content, consisting of five open-ended questions, differentiated as follows:
Attending students: reference texts and lecture notes (including slide content and in-depth materials)
Non-attending students: reference texts and supplementary readings
For Master’s degree students, an additional oral exam is required, consisting of the discussion of a report on a discourse marker in Italian or an Italo-Romance dialect, previously agreed upon with the instructor. The report must be submitted to the instructor seven days prior to the exam date.
Texts
Andorno, Cecilia (2003). Linguistica testuale. Un'introduzione. Roma, Carocci. [Chapters 2, 4 and 5] Bazzanella, Carla (2006 o ediz. successive). Linguistica e pragmatica del linguaggio. Roma-Bari, Laterza. [Chapters 1 to 5, part II] Sansò, Andrea (2020), I segnali discorsivi. Roma, Carocci.
As an alternative to Bazzanella (2006): Domaneschi, Filippo (2014). Introduzione alla pragmatica. Roma, Carocci [Chapters 2, 3.2-3.3, 5 e 6].
Non-attending students will prepare an additional reading, chosen from a list provided by the teacher. The program of the exam for foreign students can be adapted on demand. In addition, readings in English can partially substitute readings in Italian.
Contents
Pragmatics and Text linguistics study language as a mean of communication between speakers in concrete situations. In other words, what can you do with words when you speak (and when you write)? After a general introduction (historical background, basic notions and theories), we will focus on the following topics:
1. Pragmatics
- Contexts and deixis - Speech acts theory - Inferences, presuppositions and implicatures - Conversation and discourse analysis (also based on examples from WhAP corpus) - Politeness and impoliteness strategies - Italian discourse markers
2. Linguistics of the text
- Textuality: how to recognize a text - Cohesion and coherence - Reported speech - Text linguistics and linguistic variation
Throughout the course, specific discoure markers of Italian and Italian-Romance dialects will also be discussed, in order to create a dictionary of these forms.
