Thesis supervisor: Zsuzsanna Schnell
Location of studies (in Hungarian): Pécs Abbreviation of location of studies: KPVK
Description of the research topic:
Description of the topic:
We investigate the basic tenets and problems of language philosophy and examine the questions of pragmatics. We aim to describe and understand contextual meaning, intentions of the speaker, and inferential processes of meaning construction that give ground to the coordination of discourse strategies. We define and clarify concepts of meaning and utterance, and examine the relationship of utterances and context, touch on presuppositions, implied and intended meaning, and inferential processes in deciphering implied meaning. Furthermore, we analyze inferences, and the deictic, inferential, and metarepresentational aspects of human language.
Goal and purpose:
Students gain experience in becoming a reader in philosophy, understand the difference between speaker meaning and sentence meaning, basic notions in the field of pragmatics, and become able to analyze discourse by relying on the guidelines of conversations and understand how the study of pragmatics can give an insight into understanding the functioning of the human mind, and the social aspects of human language.
Topics:
1. Definition of pragmatics, problems of definition
2. Birth and beginnings of pragmatics
3. Contextual meaning, Social language use: discourse organization, invisible meaning, inferences
4. The beginnings: Austin, Searle, speech acts, and modularity – basic notions
5. Indirect utterances
6. Paul Grice: Implicatures
7. Gricean pragmatics – the communicative principle and maxims as principles of discourse organization
8. The cognitive turn – Grice and the cognitive view
9. Discourse organization, conversations, structural elements of discourse, mundane vs. institutional situations
10. Politeness, indirect utterances as conversational strategies
11. Cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics
12. Nonverbal meaning – idioms, humor, irony. Indirectness, pragmatic competence in atypical cases
Number of students who can be accepted: 3
Deadline for application: 2024-08-31
2024. IV. 17. ODT ülés Az ODT következő ülésére 2024. június 14-én, pénteken 10.00 órakor kerül sor a Semmelweis Egyetem Szenátusi termében (Bp. Üllői út 26. I. emelet).
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